Fiery printing and spooling

[mrwho]

This is one of those posts meant to check if I'm correct or not about something, so here it goes:

Customer asked me why didn't the machine (which uses a Fiery controller) didn't start the printing process before completely receiving the printjob. I explained that, since the Fiery controller needs to "rip" the job before printing, it first needs to receive everything.

Now, I'm quite sure that this is the case, but is there any chance that I'm wrong and that I can tell the Fiery to start printing immediately (told the customer to try with the "Direct" queue, but there was no change according to him)?

[zed255]

I'm pretty sure that a Fiery will spool the whole job first on its own drive for ripping and then begin printing.

Any chance this is a customer who bought or were sold a Fiery for the wrong reasons? I find in my area the sales force figures a Fiery is a 'performace' print controller and places them where the Ricoh GW controller would actually do better. They (both the salesperson and the client) don't realize what a Fiery is really for and get upset when it doesn't perform as they think it should. If they aren't managing colour, media types, or doing a lot of data overlay activity they likely have it for the wrong reasons IMHO.

[Hemlock]

In the printer properties, under the Advanced tab, is a radio button allowing to Start Printing Immediately. Try that along with configuring the port to print to the direct queue (printer properties>ports>configure port).

I'll occasionally use my Micropress to send massive jobs to the Fiery and it prints while still spooling. Could be that the amount of time it takes to start the rip process and print the first page or two is enough for the Fiery to finish the ripping the entire job, giving the illusion of completely ripping prior to printing.

[TheOwl]

Yeah, as above, try using the Start Printing Imediately, but this won't work if you are printing with finishing options as the Fiery needs the whole job then to be able to then calculate finishing orders and stuff like that.

Now I believe that there must be some misconception about the print queues with in a Fiery, so I will go ahead and explain them:

Print: This queue utilises the full power of the Fiery and its RIP chips. Depending on the type of Fiery is to how many rip chips there are. This queue is used for imediate print of images to the device in which the Fiery is connected to.

Hold: This queue also uses all of the RIP chips available but holds the print job instead of sending the data to the connected device. This queue is useful for spooling up big jobs which can then be re-printed (using Command Workstation) much quicker than trying ro resend the big job. Files that have been held in the Hold queue can also then be edited by means of attaching it to another print job, changing the finshing setup along with other features.

Direct: This queue does not utilise the RIP chips with in the Fiery. Instead, it is completely loaded up, spooled and transmitted to the connected device by the Fiery CPU. When printing bigger jobs, you find that it takes a lot longer to get the job printing as the Fiery isn't using the processing power of the RIP chips. When I was trained on the Fiery controllers for Konica Minolta, our EFI representative said to only use the Direct queue if you believe you are having trouble with the Fiery system such as a bad RIP chip because this queue bypasses the RIP chips. This queue is also used to directly send patches to if you have them in the .PS format. If you send a file in the .PS format to the Print queue, the Fiery will try to process it as a print job.

[Synaux]

If I can jump in this discussion...
If one were to install a Fiery via standard TCP/IP Port/install pcl/ps driver etc, etc...what is the default mode it would use (e.g., print, hold, direct)?
And--how would/could one specify it, or is this an undesirable method?

[TheOwl]

You can enable Port 9100 from the setup menu (if it isn't already enabled from the factory like some Fierys were) and then specify the queue you want 9100 to go to.

The default is PRINT one you have enabled Port 9100.

Other than that, when you create the TCP/IP Port, instead of using RAW 9100, set the port to LPR and then type PRINT or HOLD or DIRECT as the queue name.