How to Scan Trading Cards with Video: Best Practices

1. Light the cards, not the room

The single biggest factor in recognition accuracy is even, diffused light on the card face. The AI reads names, set symbols and card numbers straight off the artwork — shadows and blown-out highlights hide exactly those details.

• •Use daylight from a window or a desk lamp bounced off a wall — never a bare bulb directly overhead.
• •Avoid harsh overhead lights that cast your own hand's shadow over each card as you place it.
• •Holo and reverse-holo cards reflect light: tilt your light source slightly off-angle so the foil doesn't flare white.

2. Use a plain, contrasting background

CardArk auto-crops and straightens every card by finding its rectangular outline. A busy tablecloth or a background the same colour as the card border makes edge detection harder.

• •A plain dark mat for light-bordered cards, or a plain light surface for dark-bordered cards, works best.
• •Avoid patterned surfaces, wood grain with strong lines, or other cards lying nearby in frame.

3. Lock the camera down

Film top-down with the camera fixed — propped on books, a tripod, or a phone stand. The motion detector watches for a new card settling; a wobbling camera looks like constant motion and can merge two cards into one event.

Frame the stack so the card fills roughly a third to half of the frame. Too far away and text becomes unreadable; too close and your hand covers the card during placement.

4. Pace your stacking

The detector waits for the scene to go still before capturing the sharpest frame of each new card. Give it that moment.

• •Place a card, pull your hand fully out of frame, count one second, then place the next.
• •Don't slide cards around after placing them — set each one down flat in one motion.
• •Keep each card fully covering the one beneath it, so the top card is always the one being read.

5. Sleeves, toploaders and glare

Penny sleeves are usually fine. Toploaders and glossy sleeves catch light and can throw a white streak across the card name — the most common cause of a misread.

• •If a card is valuable enough for a toploader, consider scanning it before you seal it, or angle your light lower.
• •Matte sleeves scan noticeably better than glossy ones.

6. Video settings that work

1080p at normal speed is the sweet spot — 4K adds upload time without improving recognition. Keep clips under a few minutes; if you have 200 cards, several shorter videos are easier to review than one marathon take. Files up to 500MB are accepted (MP4, MOV or WEBM).

When a card is missed or misread

No scan is perfect, and CardArk assumes that. Every card lands in Review with your snapshot next to the AI's matched reference image, so a wrong match is obvious at a glance.

• •Wrong match? Open the card and use 'Possible matches' to pick the right listing, or upload your own reference image.
• •Misidentified? Add a hint in the 'Add context' box (e.g. 'this is the 1st Edition Jungle print') and hit Re-scan with AI.
• •Missed entirely? Use 'Add card' in your Binder to add it manually — with or without a photo.