For some years I have been using FreeOCR to get the overview from back covers instead of trying to type them in. It has worked relatively well, but far from perfectly.

Recently I started looking for alternative programs, but could not find anything that worked better for me than FreeOCR. But then I found a free OCR service online. I never thought that it would work better, but it really did. Biggly 

The only drawback compared to FreeOCR is that you cannot crop the image. You have to crop it when you scan it, and then upload it. I have scanned in grayscale and 600 dpi. I have had extremely good results, both with English and Swedish texts, even with difficult backgrounds.

So if you have a scanner and like to contribute overviews, give https://www.onlineocr.net/ a try.

I've tried that and occasionally gotten burned because the text was similar enough that I didn't notice some slight difference. And far from every overview can be found like that.

Thanks for the "onlineocr" tip, I tried it with an existing 300DPI DVD cover scan I had, and it worked quite well. I bet it will work even better with a higher DPI scan.

Quoting surfeur51:

Quote:
In the layout I use, I have a scan of the back cover which gives a very good copy of the "DVD" overview, with all details, fonts, colors and spelling mistakes... So the overview field can be used to have something useful concerning the movie, without advertising nor spoilers...

That is of course your choice, for your local database. The drawback is that the scan isn't searchable. But if you feel that whatever info you enter there is more important, then go for it.

I finally got around to trying onlineocr.  Works very well.  I did find that having dark text on a light background works best.  I submitted some cropped text from several rather poorly scanned back covers and except for some names the text was correct.  My hunch is that it's not simply ocring but doing some grammar and spell checking as well.