Errors when processing / ripping PDF

[chrisio]

Hello.

I have a 1500 page pdf document made up of all sorts of pdf's, images, word files etc etc. When I try to process the file for printing through Fiery, it wont process due to errors such as missing fonts etc. I have tried to save the imposed file as a flat file which made no difference - Within Adobe I have tried to optimise and resave the file, preflight & flatten the file and resave, none of which works.

I have even tried importing the pdf into a new indesign file and then exporting that as a pdf which didnt work either.

This is a court document and the solicitors cant help either as to them it loads etc and if I print it on the photo copier it works but it will cost 4 times as much to print on that and if I can print it 2 up it will save me fortune in print cost and time.

Does any one have any suggestions on how I can fix the PDF.

Cheers
Chris

 

[EdwardB]

I've had good luck processing "corrupt" PDFs through Ghostscript. Its a command-line application, completely open source. It all depends on "what" is corrupt...

gswin64 -dBATCH -dNOPAUS -o ".\Resaved\Filename_Date_Repaired.pdf" -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress "Filename"

".\Resaved\Filename_Date_Repaired.pdf" is the output file/path
"Filename" is the input file/path

I've also had good luck with fixing PDFs with "corrupt" font descriptors using Acrobat Pro & PDF Writer. Open the file in Acrobat Pro, print to the Adobe PDF Writer print driver.

 

[EdwardB]

**part 2

Lastly, you could turn all of the pages into rasters... then re-combine them into one "giga file".

either using Ghostscript, or select the "print as image" option with Acrobat Pro and send to Adobe PDF writer.

Ghostscript:

gswin64 -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=png16m -r400 -dTextAlphaBits=4 -sOutputFile="Folder\pages-%04d.png" "Filename"

"Folder\pages-%04d.png" is the file naming/path to the output. the %04 is 4-digit auto naming, starting with 0001 and ending at up to 9999

 

[abc]

Do you get any clues from the Preflight report or the error messages on the rip?

 

[chrisio]

**part 2

Lastly, you could turn all of the pages into rasters... then re-combine them into one "giga file".

either using Ghostscript, or select the "print as image" option with Acrobat Pro and send to Adobe PDF writer.

Ghostscript:

gswin64 -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=png16m -r400 -dTextAlphaBits=4 -sOutputFile="Folder\pages-%04d.png" "Filename"

"Folder\pages-%04d.png" is the file naming/path to the output. the %04 is 4-digit auto naming, starting with 0001 and ending at up to 9999

Thanks very much, I will have a play about tomorrow. I printed it direct to the photocopier earlier so printing it to a new pdf might be the way forward.

 

[chrisio]

Do you get any clues from the Preflight report or the error messages on the rip?

It's due to missing fonts "I think" according to the rip. And the preflight report highlighted font issues as well.

It's a no go, going back to the client due to it being a court case file its just a huge mash up of images, multiple pdfs and all sorts.

Worse case scenario is that I will print it to the photocopier but I'm just trying half my costs in doing so.

 

[abc]

Are you sure the output through the Photocopier will be ok?

Was there a list of missing fonts, did you try embedding any of them?
Not sure what the Fiery has as policies for missing fonts, but there should be other options apart from erroring?

Also note the pages with the missing fonts listed in the preflight report, gives you a steer on which pages to check before you deliver the job!

 

[chrisio]

Are you sure the output through the Photocopier will be ok?

Was there a list of missing fonts, did you try embedding any of them?
Not sure what the Fiery has as policies for missing fonts, but there should be other options apart from erroring?

Also note the pages with the missing fonts listed in the preflight report, gives you a steer on which pages to check before you deliver the job!

Very good point actually. I will check the preflight against the printed pages. I know that the document printed with no errors so I'm hopeful it will be OK if I cant get it through the proper printer.

Thanks

 

[jwheeler]

As a last resort, in the Acrobat print window, go to "Advanced" then check the box for "Print as Image". This rasterizes every page before sending over. Not the most ideal for a 1,500 page document, but you could consider breaking it up into 3 sections and marry them together in Fiery's Compose...or manually combine after printing. Experiment with changing the dpi to 150 or 200 by sending only 10-15 pages to see how low you can get away with and still have a decent-looking print. The lower dpi will obviously make the file smaller and process faster.

 

[tngcas]

As a last resort, in the Acrobat print window, go to "Advanced" then check the box for "Print as Image". This rasterizes every page before sending over. Not the most ideal for a 1,500 page document, but you could consider breaking it up into 3 sections and marry them together in Fiery's Compose...or manually combine after printing. Experiment with changing the dpi to 150 or 200 by sending only 10-15 pages to see how low you can get away with and still have a decent-looking print. The lower dpi will obviously make the file smaller and process faster.

Yup, this is our last resort option also. You can also sometimes "faster" to use Adobe to convert it all to JPGs at 600dpi to preserve quality and then recombine to PDF. Or use ILovePDF.com to convert to JPGs (they come out lower res tho). But sometimes that's the only way to get it to print. ILovePDF does it very quickly compared to Print as Image rip speed on a document that size.

 

[chrisio]

Well, "printing as image" seemed to work until right at the end it gave an generic error that just said that it had encountered errors and I should go back to the source of the document however it did seem to create the PDF ok and to my eyes looked fine. I gave Ghostscript a try and that just ripped through the file and I could see on the output where it was substituting missing fonts and that completed without error.


I have 2 options to have a go at now so I am confident one of these works!

Many thanks for your ideas and suggestions.

 

[Snowhugger]

I'm assuming your problem is fixed but I'll just throw in a couple of nuggets that have worked for me in the past.

Rather than export the file from InDesign, print it to a postscript file. Use Acrobat distiller to create a new PDF. This fixes lots of problems in my experience. It's simple and usually worth a try.

Also you could break down the document into sections and try sending it through the fiery, or whatever rip you are using. The error might be caused by a single page or small set of pages that you could rasterize or substitute fonts or use some other band aid to get you through.

Cheers.

 

[chriscozi]

Rather than export the file from InDesign, print it to a postscript file.

Well, until Adobe takes away the ability I usually export as EPS files and then create pdf with import.
Yes this is not the best option.
Yes the problems are the PDF creator program issue.
No there are no better options to keep vectors -INCLUDING FONTS - in the file.
No the creator programs can't be arm twisted to fix their issues.
Yes this either bitmaps or vectorizes unreadable/garbled fonts etc.
Yes most page boxes etc get recreated correctly.

All of this to AVOID rasterizing the page BEFORE printing so that you can edit if possible and necessary.
Works for me.
YMMV.

 

[J_DVRS]

When fonts give me issues, I find "print to pdf" fixes the problem, however it does change the colors a little bit

 

[loicaigon]

I think indeed that the first step is better understand where the problem comes from. To be honest, I would be concerned that the solution was to make an image out of the file. Because to get the rendering done, the flattening engine would certainly try to access that font anyway. Worst case scenario, the flattening is done silencing errors and you feel like everything is ok, but actually isn't.
If you can share the report for font issues, then we may find more appropriate solutions.
My 2cts

 

[Digi_Wiz]

I have had issues with certain customer files (common factor seems to be those created in word then ran through our workflow) crashing the fiery on processing. Even after flattening the artworrk or PDFx1a. The work around I have had success with instead of dropping them into the queue on our prepress work stations has been putting the files on a thumbdrive then printing them to the held queue from acrobat on the fiery tower itself.

 

[chrisio]

Thanks for all the additional replies. I managed to fix the pdf with ghostscript as suggested above. Just by chance when flicking through the print i came across one of the corrupt pages and on checking the original version it was exactly the same so I am confident that the final version was fine. Unfortunately uploading the document is out of the question, its 700mb of highly confidential documents with transcripts of 999 police phone calls, explicit photos and a multitude of other stuff and all that over a boundary dispute!.

Many thanks for all the suggestions and pointers.

Chris

 

[bcr]

Hello.

I have a 1500 page pdf document made up of all sorts of pdf's, images, word files etc etc. When I try to process the file for printing through Fiery, it wont process due to errors such as missing fonts etc. I have tried to save the imposed file as a flat file which made no difference - Within Adobe I have tried to optimise and resave the file, preflight & flatten the file and resave, none of which works.

I have even tried importing the pdf into a new indesign file and then exporting that as a pdf which didnt work either.

This is a court document and the solicitors cant help either as to them it loads etc and if I print it on the photo copier it works but it will cost 4 times as much to print on that and if I can print it 2 up it will save me fortune in print cost and time.

Does any one have any suggestions on how I can fix the PDF.

Cheers
Chris

I'm in the same field and encounter this oh so often.

Things which usually work for me:

- re process it in distiller
- convert all pages to CMYK image in acrobat preflight fixups
- print it as a new pdf using "Microsoft Print to PDF" driver

In my experience the issues with these types of files tend to be caused by:

- OCR text being falsely detected in scanned documents and particularly in non Latin based languages resulting in garbage text and missing random fonts
- text headers for e.g. exhibit references being added but extending beyond the page boundaries
- other random stuff extending beyond the page boundaries

But nearly always it's font issues.