Extremely slow display of imported PDF images

In practical terms, you can always toggle the display of graphics off in FM, but that doesn't work for all situations.

A few things to check:

Did you optimize the PDFs when they were created? (You'd still want to avoid downsampling and compression, but optimization still reduces the size.)

Also, a lot of the graphics processing is memory-intensive, so you should be using machines that are loaded up with RAM and have healthy open space.

Finally, if it happens consistently, the machines' anti-virus programs may be screening everything every time each file is opened. So adjust those settings... That's easy to test for too -- just shut it off and try an import.

How heavily are the servers being hit by other applications and users, and how fast is the network? Not being able to serve the files quickly enough is another chokepoint.

Move a book with Bruce Foster's Archive plugin to create a local copy and test with that to see if the problem is actually FM and the local machine, or something outside.....

It may also be worth checking to see if the computers have the lastest graphics card drivers loaded too.

Art

I am experiencing the same problem with one of my clients, except they are using FrameMaker 7.2 and EPS images (also stored on a network drive). They cannot recall when exactly the problem started occurring, but it is a real nuisance as they have images on most pages of their manual and scrolling through a document takes ages. Also, printing to PDF is problematic when they have not scrolled through the entire document just yet as not all the images have been "loaded into the document" at that point. Any advise would be greatly appreciated!

We are having the same problem. It started a few months ago for us. Until then PDFs imported fine. We're using FM 7 but Acrobat 8 professional. Haven't done any upgrades for FM in a long time. If the AV program is screening PDFs, how do you change that setting?

Steven,

I have Acrobat set for automatic updates, and I vaguely remember on taking place a week or three ago...

Given your description of the problem, that your 7.x install is unaffected, and that 8.1.3 rolled out 11/4... I think I'd get on the phone to Adobe and see what was in that. Also, it may be possible to uninstall that update from the Windows Uninstall Control Panel.

One other thing to check would be your AV program... it may be screening the PDF files as they're referenced from FM, and that would cause a significant hit.

And finally, it may be worth downloading an eval of Acrobat 9 to see if that makes a difference.

Art

Hi Sheila

I am importing bt reference into the document, and the images are stored on a network drive. However, I don't think it is a problem with the network, as non-PDF images (WMF, PNG) of a similar size are opening OK, and the machine where things are working OK is also accessing at the same point.

All systems are using the "Adobe PDF" printer as the system default.

Steven

Steven, could you clarify your use of "import" in FM terms, i.e. do you mean the PDFs are "imported by copy" into the FM document, or are they imported by reference.

If imported by reference, are the images stored local to each system, or are they on a network somewhere?

Can you compare the printers on the systems, do they all have the "Acrobat PDF" (or equivalent name, depending on Acro version) printer on the system, and do all the systems use that as the system default, or alternatively do they all use the wonderful freebie "SetPrint" utility from http://www.sundorne.com which sets the default for FM only.