News & updates
Our CLZ Scanner app was launched in Feb 2023. Since then, there have been several improvement to the built-in barcode scanners in the actual CLZ cataloging apps, so we figured it was time to bring all those enhancements to CLZ Scanner. Resulting in this big 2.0 update!
Reminder: What is CLZ Scanner?
CLZ Scanner is our free barcode scanner app, for use with the CLZ Web web-based software. You can use the CLZ Scanner app on your phone, to scan barcodes with your phone and send the scanned barcodes to the Barcode queue in the Add screen of the CLZ Web software on your computer.
The scanned barcodes can either be sent to the CLZ Web software instantly while you scan, OR you can opt to scan barcodes into CLZ Scanner’s own queue while offline, and then later sync the entire queue to the CLZ Web software.
In other words, CLZ Scanner is a barcode scanner app, nothing more, nothing less, it is not a cataloging app like our other five CLZ apps. All it does is scan barcodes into a queue and then sync that queue to the CLZ Web software. The actual adding to your database is done there, in the CLZ Web software on your computer.
What’s new in CLZ Scanner 2.0?
For scanning to the Add screen of CLZ Music Web, CLZ Movies Web, CLZ Games Web and CLZ Books Web we made the following improvements:
- Now reads barcodes much faster and in the entire camera screen!
- New scanning feedback shows where it “sees” a barcode
- For books: Scan screen now also “reads” actual ISBN numbers using OCR
- For comics: Better scanning of barcode extensions: no more AUTO/EXT toggle!
Now reads barcodes much faster and in the entire camera screen!
For this update, we switched to a different barcode scan engine that is much faster in detecting and scanning barcodes.
And, because it is so fast now, we opened it up to detect barcodes in the entire visible camera screen (previously, the scanner only detected barcodes in a small area in the center of the scan screen).
These two changes together will make it much quicker and easier to scan barcodes. Just point your camera in the general direction of the barcode and it will already go “beep!” and add to queue!
New scanning feedback shows where it “sees” a barcode
On top of that: the new barcode scanner screen gives you more feedback on where it “sees” a barcode. It shows a detected barcode with a red box and red scan line and will follow it around the screen if you move the camera.
For books: Scan screen now also “reads” actual ISBN numbers using OCR
This was the main new feature in version 10.0 of the CLZ Books app: adding books by reading the actual ISBN number, no barcode needed!
Previously the scan screen could only scan ISBN barcodes, but we have now enhanced the scanning with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), so that it can also “read” ISBN numbers that are printed on the book.
Reading ISBN numbers with OCR will be super useful for:
- Older books without barcodes, but with an ISBN printed on the cover or on the inside of the book.
- Books where the barcode on the book is not an ISBN barcode but a UPC barcode. Those UPC barcodes usually have the ISBN number printed above the barcode, which will now be read instead.
For comics: Better scanning of barcode extensions: no more AUTO/EXT toggle!
In version 9.5 of the CLZ Comics app, we enhanced the camera barcode scanner to better deal with barcodes that have a 2 digit or 5 digit “extension”. (As you may know, scanning this barcode extension is essential, as that part tells the app what the issue number and variant is!)
After scanning the first part of the barcode, the camera scanner now uses our vast CLZ Core online barcode database to do quick checks whether it should expect an extension or not. And if Core says there should be one, it “tries harder” to actually find it and scan it.
This new built-in smartness eliminates the need for the AUTO/EXT toggle in the scan screen, so that is now gone! No more need to toggle EXT mode off when scanning TPBs or older comics. Just point the camera at the barcode and the scanner will work it out. Easy!