Fusion Pro Imposer - Stack and Chunking

[mcaputo]

Hi all,

Looking for a little insight to an issue I'm having with Fusion Pro. I am attempting to output to multiple files while composing jobs that must be imposed. All of the documentation I have searched for has been vague at best. From what I have gathered, the stack must be divisible evenly by the chunk of records that you want to limit the files to. I have tried this time and time again with no luck. I am rather new to VDP, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Mike

 

[Visualaid]

funny (not you, the situation), because I'm on an imac and had the same problems with fusion. I have a number of emails back and forth with fusion and nothing has ever been resolved. I've used fusion on a pc at my last position and didn't have any trouble. I have since decided no matter how long it takes me, to just do it all in indesign. I've tried everything with fusion. The fusion people couldn't even figure it out, so I'd say do it in design (i've got a pretty quick method now) if your records aren't more than 1000. Sorry I know this isn't helping anything but I sympathize with you.

 

[Ultimate]

3rd party imposition to boost your Fusion Pro productivity

3rd party imposition to boost your Fusion Pro productivity

What type of imposition do you need to do and for how many records/pages?
What is your output/print sheet size and what are your page sizes?
Is this a frequent job? How many times per month?

Perhaps one of the third party imposition solutions on the market would solve you issue and save you lots of time (instead of wasting time to do it manually in Indesign, etc.).

There are several solutions on the market that are economical and most developers offer free trial versions.

Ray Duval
Ultimate Technographics

 

[Visualaid]

ours is usually 4up on 12x18, 1000-1300 records not very frequent, postcard sizes like 5x7bleeds, 4x6bleeds, 5.5x8.5bleeds, maybe 1 to 2 times a month (pathetic i know).
I miss xmpie.

 

[mcaputo]

I do many jobs and most of them are different. From the number of records, to the size of press sheets, to the imposition, and the size of the piece.

 

[mcaputo]

I appreciate your offer Ray, but my company is not in the market to update anything. I am simply seeking the knowledge of using the tools I have access to. The imposer that comes with Fusion works great for small jobs, but when jobs with over 5k records need to be processed, the files must be chunked so the printers can process the data efficiently.

 

[Ultimate]

mcaputo, ideally, if you have lots of variation, I would suggest you look into a hot folder based imposition with dynamic layouts, so you cut time on imposition of similar pieces and automate as much as possible.

When you generate VDP jobs in Fusion Pro, as a PDF output, you would benefit from using a hot folder based imposition with your own production settings, and perhaps with a PDF X object optimization to reduce file size.

You can try several solutions on to market with a couple live jobs to see how you can save on time.

 

[mcaputo]

So what you're telling me is you don't know how to use Fusion Pro and its imposer to accomplish the task I am asking for help with.

Thanks bud!

 

[dabob]

I'm not a big user of fusion pro but it seems to me that if you used the from - to windows of the compose dialog box it could solve your problem . . . say you got a 10,000 record dbase just recompose using # sets similar to

1 to 1000
1001 to 2000

etc . . . and you would have to give each "compose run" a new file name i think

see attached image

good luck

 

[mcaputo]

That is the current method we employ. It is a huge time waster, especially when we have 100k+ records to compose that need to be done overnight. Getting imposed files to break out into chunks is the answer, but how to get FP to process it without erroring out and producing one huge file is the enigma! There is some Alex guy on other forums that recites the same solution over and over again when the same question is posed.....go figure he works for FP VDP support.

Something about this issue smells......

 

[mcaputo]

"If the stack batch output fits evenly into or is the same size as the chunk, then the chunk size is honored. When there is a conflict between the stack size and the chunk size, multiple output files are produced using the stack batch (SxVxH) output size. This is also the case when the stack output size is greater than the chunk size. When Infinite Stack is used, a conflict is reported and one output file is generated."

-Alex Marshall - FusionPro VDP support



Spliting a large record file into smaller increments - PTI Marketing Technologies User Community

-Also: Not the only place that guy has posted the same statement. Does it sound like its right out of a script to anyone else?

 

[dabob]

Wow - 100,000 records at a shot . .. I'm not so sure that Fusion was built with that in mind - (mind you I'm not defending them) but for an 800 dollar price tag I don't think a pickup truck should be expected to so the work of a Tractor Trailer either . . .. sounds like you need a more robust solution . . .

my 2 cents . . .

 

[mcaputo]

Most jobs are between 10k and 20k, rarely do we have something that large. I haven't been here long, but I've already noticed that FP and the machines it is installed on are the bottleneck when it comes to our laser printing department. Well, that and the 3, 20 year old xeroxes. I guess the mail business isn't what it used to be.

 

[jmarbury]

Make sure in FP Imposer that the Stack is used in the first column when you define the number of horizontal and vertical elements of the imposition. As far as speed goes, if you are using the desktop version, the Mac will impose about 5x faster than a comparable PC. If you do a lot on the PC upgrade to the FusionPro server, it is comparable in speed to the Mac desktop version