Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

[AyJayAreDii]

I am getting and hearing more and more of issues with slow printing on PDF. i have had this on Ricoh, kyocera Mita and Konica Minolta. In the spool (pcl6 and PCL5) the file increases in size dramatically. for instance a 2mb pdf file in the spool will incress to 220mb. The printer will then print at a rate of a page per 30 seconds, sometimes page per minuet.

I have found the people using 64bit systems are more likely to experiences the problems.

Things I have tried are;
-print as image (makes worst)
-trying to re save the pdf in a new version of Abobe. (sometimes better and sometimes worst)
-telling the customer that the problem only started when they upgraded to windows 7 64bit so it not our issue. (did not fly)
-shouting at the printer (no change in performance but made me feel better)

anyone know anyway of over coming the issues???

Cheers

[rthonpm]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

This is a popular one that I've seen going back to Windows XP. The main culprits that I've seen are PDFs generated from scanned documents. There are a few workarounds:

1. Use the PostScript driver if you can. If PS isn't available then dump PCL 6 for PCL5 for the next workaround

2. For Black and white documents, change the resolution from 600 dpi (the max for PCL5) to 300. The job will fire out like any normal file would.

For my PCL clients, I'd create a preset for PDFs that they could use in case of any issues. The problem would sometimes be random so it was there as a method of speeding up the job.

[KenB]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

Ironically enough, Adobe Acrobat / Reader is the worst possible application to print PDFs from.

Try FoxIt Reader, or any other freeware PDF reader, for that matter.

I'll bet you'll like the results.

[twinax]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

Hello,

The best way to print PDF is Acrobat reader or the top acrobat Pro. Other software are emulation.

PDF files are sometimes complexes, it is not a good way to print pdf file in PCL ! ridiculous situation.

A pdf file should be printed in postscript (PS).

About pdf files there are some very complexe ones, when one of them contain some X-Object, those file can be very very long to print. (e.g. 10Mo = 3500 pages. pages background need to be ripped for all pages, page by page. We spend 4h00 only to RIP this file without X-Object selected. File 10Mo = spool more than 2Go)

Check into your controler configuration if x-object are selected. or pdf X-file.

It should be better. (this is valid for all brand.)

Regards,

[KenB]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

Hello,

The best way to print PDF is Acrobat reader or the top acrobat Pro. Other software are emulation.

PDF files are sometimes complexes, it is not a good way to print pdf file in PCL ! ridiculous situation.

A pdf file should be printed in postscript (PS).

About pdf files there are some very complexe ones, when one of them contain some X-Object, those file can be very very long to print. (e.g. 10Mo = 3500 pages. pages background need to be ripped for all pages, page by page. We spend 4h00 only to RIP this file without X-Object selected. File 10Mo = spool more than 2Go)

Check into your controler configuration if x-object are selected. or pdf X-file.

It should be better. (this is valid for all brand.)

Regards,

While I agree that Acrobat / Reader may be the best "standard" to print with, and that using PostScript for a PDF is superior to PCL (after all, a PDF is a PS file with a little more info), there are several major issues with that line of thought:

1. Most printers don't have PostScript, either true or emulated. Even at that, some if not most PostScript emulators leave A LOT to be desired.

2. I don't know of any "business" print controller that has any setting for x-objects, other than possibly very high end units.

3. Most business application, or "office" users could care less about the high end or esoteric aspects of printing PDFs; all they know is that they want output, and they want it fast. That, I believe, is the true problem at hand; we've all had calls for that at one time or another.

[nmfaxman]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

I recently had 2 accounts with problems with the updated reader.
One had the problem that every time she would print from Adobe reader, her computer would change to a different network with different IP address. This was to a Ricoh 3245.

The other would tell the print driver to print in color no matter what the driver said. This was to a Copystar CSC 4035.

I for one am starting to lose respect for Adobe and am looking into alternatives for my customers.

[Jules Winfield]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

All these responses are valid, however no one has mentioned maxing out the option memory so I will...

[rthonpm]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

I recently had 2 accounts with problems with the updated reader.
One had the problem that every time she would print from Adobe reader, her computer would change to a different network with different IP address. This was to a Ricoh 3245.

The other would tell the print driver to print in color no matter what the driver said. This was to a Copystar CSC 4035.

I for one am starting to lose respect for Adobe and am looking into alternatives for my customers.

I'm not quite sure about the first issue. Acrobat isn't tied into any subsystem that could change network addressing.

The second issue I have seen, the change for black and white or colour needs to be set through Adobe Reader's print menu, and not the driver options. I got so frustrated with that one that I submitted a bug report to Adobe.

[KenB]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

Personally. I like FoxIt Reader. Better than Adobe PDF Reader and Acrobat

[colgrimes]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

I am getting and hearing more and more of issues with slow printing on PDF. i have had this on Ricoh, kyocera Mita and Konica Minolta. In the spool (pcl6 and PCL5) the file increases in size dramatically. for instance a 2mb pdf file in the spool will incress to 220mb. The printer will then print at a rate of a page per 30 seconds, sometimes page per minuet.

I have found the people using 64bit systems are more likely to experiences the problems.

Things I have tried are;
-print as image (makes worst)
-trying to re save the pdf in a new version of Abobe. (sometimes better and sometimes worst)
-telling the customer that the problem only started when they upgraded to windows 7 64bit so it not our issue. (did not fly)
-shouting at the printer (no change in performance but made me feel better)

anyone know anyway of over coming the issues???

Cheers

AyJay,
i dont know about other manufacturers, but Sharps print drivers have a "bitmap compression" option on the advanced tab that comes default on "none" or "very high quality" and i have used this options to change 10mb power points from spooling up to over 100mb to less than 30mb. i changed the slider to medium quality, and noticed NO CHANGE in the color quality of the print out. and it was a full color print.

-colgrimes
Skelton Business Equipment Houston Copiers

[Bullet71]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

I did a test yesterday on a Bizhub 362 which is known to be bad on pdf printing. using the same file Foxit took 4min 29s to spool to machine and 2m21s using Adobe Acrobat Reader. That is using the PS driver for the machine. We have quite a few clients complaining about the speed of PDF's at the moment, wish there was a fix that worked for everyones aplications.

[Shadow]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

take some time and look through the print drivers. there is a spot where you can set PDF Pass through and it greatly reduces printing speed for PDF documents.

I have been using Foxit PDF Programs since they hit the market.
I gave up on Adobe after version 6, everything went down hill from there.

[blackcat4866]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

This might be a little off topic, but I'll throw it in anyhow.

There was an occasion in which one of my customers complained about PDF's printing slowly. As a test I'll usually print off a 200 pg service manual and time the results. When the results were within a few seconds of the rated copy speed, the customer says: "... but try this file!"

Sure enough that file took 10 minutes to spool. I took a copy of the file. Upon later examination I discovered that the original size of this single page document was 36" x 48" and 30MB, then being printed onto letter sized paper. You think maybe a little processing will be required to reduce the document to 1/4 of it's size?

In another location we had two bizhub C360's side by side. The one at the left spooled a single page in 14s, the one on the right 1m30s. Same document from the same PC, same network. Next we unplugged all the cords at the MFP and swapped the MFP's. Same exact result. The left one was still only 14s, the right still 1m30s.

At this point I was pretty much satisfied that the MFP couldn't possibly be the cause of the problem. After all, it was a different MFP, yet the problem stayed with the location.

Then we examined the rat's nest of cabling on the floor. There was 25ft of cable to surge suppressor, 25ft of cable to VOIP box, 15ft of cable to MFP. I installed 6 foot cables, which didn't make any difference. I removed the surge suppressor, no difference. When I removed the VOIP box the right one took off at the same speed as the left one. If I understand this correctly the connection can only operate as fast as it's slowest component, in this case a 10MB VOIP box.

So even if you have 1GB switches and a 1GB NIC card on your MFP, if the MFP is plugged in through the 100MB network phone, the fastest you'll get is 100MB.

Just something to think about. =^..^=

[TheOwl]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

The reason for file sizes blowing out is the fact that when printing PS files through a PCL driver, the code from the PS application needs to be converted to PCL which all happens with in the spool.

I don't know if people know, but PS is a very complicated language. For instance, it takes about 40 pages of code to place a single full stop in the middle of an A4 page. Now image how much code you need for a 10 page document with pictures?

Horses for Courses is the old saying and if you have a PS enabled device, then use the PS driver when printing PS files (this also includes Publisher).

Of course, not all PS drivers are created equal and can have some very different requirements. One big one though is the use of the "Postscipt Passthrough" feature which can cause issues.

The PS Passthrough feature allows the PC that is spooling the job to try and help the driver. In 90% of all cases, then PC interacting with the driver to help try and spool the job faster causes errors and sometimes slow printing.

[Chameleon]

Re: Slow PDF printing (all make & models)

Good answer from mojo here

http://www.copytechnet.com/forums/ricoh-savin-gestetner/66919-printing-issue-spooler-file-size-huge.html