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Question

How can you improve FM performance when rendering high-resolution PDFs?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 4, 2024
6 replies
552 views

I'm not sure if this is a Frame question, an Adobe Distiller question, or a Windows question.

Adobe TCS 2019 running on Windows 11.

i9 CPU, 32GB RAM, all SSD storage.

700-page book with many graphics (linked TIFF, PNG, PDF files).

Printing the book to PDF using "Press Quality" settings (for handing off to a commercial printer) takes over 30 minutes to run.

However, checking system monitor under Windows during the process, neither RAM nor CPU utilization ever even comes close to maximum; typically stays around 50%. It seems like a large portion of the time the system is idling (or close to it).

How do I tell Frame, or Distiller, or Windows to "USE MOAR CPU!" so that the task completes faster rather than just meandering at its own pace?

I realize that modern Windows and CPUs are geared towards multithreaded/multitasking. In the days of yesteryear when everything was singlethreaded, if you wanted better performance, just get a faster CPU. That doesn't appear to be the way things work any more. Windows seems to go out of its way to PREVENT high CPU utilization, under the assumption that a zillion things need to be running at once (and in fairness, there are always background applications and services running that the user isn't aware of).

But it seems like there should be a way to tell Frame or Windows "Hey, instead of only utilizing 50% of the CPU horsepower, let's bump it up to 75%" or something similar.

Any ideas?

PDF output

This topic has been closed for replies.

F

FrameMaker-dk

Community Expert

There are other pdf printer drivers besides Adobes own. I have sometimes used BullZip and Microsoft PDF. Both good products IMHO. Sumatra PDF is also an option.

Bjørn Smalbro - FrameMaker.dk

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi @dharding1:

In case 2022 is the answer, the Adobe Technical Communication software is available at a discount (~ 60%) to eligible students, teachers, staff and educational institutions, and this is for the subscription. You can pass this link on to your purchasing department: https://www.adobe.com/products/technicalcommunicationsuite/education.html.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

Matt-Tech Comm Tools

Community Expert

It sounds like you're using the "old" PDF engine, rather than the one supplied in the Pubish pod.

See details at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUfpeA1dPRU

I believe there were also speed improvements in either 2020 or 2022 engines, so a trial of Fm 2022 (updated to 17.0.3) should prove even faster than the best you can do with Fm 2019

ALSO

You don't mention your specific version number in your post...

There were 8 updates to Fm 2019, meaning you should be looking at version 15.0.8.

Updating as needed might give you updates to the PDF engine that we don't remember off the top of the head from a few years back.

https://helpx.adobe.com/framemaker/kb/resolved-issues-framemaker-2019.html

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant

D

dharding1Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you for the multiple replies.

I am using Frame 15.0.8.979, 64-bit version. I had the 32-bit version installed as well in order to use ixgen, but no longer use it due to incompatibility issues.

I'm not sure I want to switch from perpetual license to subscription. I'll have to run it past the folks paying the bills. I'll also have to check with the campus purchasing agents, as it has been difficult to get educational pricing and licenses on subscription-based products.

I am using print to PDF rather than the publishing pod, as originally I found the POD options to not only be counterintuitive, but extremely inconsistent with respect to including bookmark information, where files are located, etc. Admittedly, I've not tried using the publish options since shortly after FM 2019 came out, as print to PDF just worked without jumping through a zillion hoops.

I will revisit both the publish option and also a trial of the current version of TCS in the interim.

Thank you.

W

Winfried Reng

Community Expert

Hi,

I think the reason is your outdated FrameMaker version.

You have FM 2019. Meanwhile there is FM 2020 and FM 2022 (with update 3).

I am not sure about these features, but this is what I remember:

Only FM 2022 supports Windows 11.

FM 2020 and 2022 run as a 64 bit application, but not FM 2019. This means that your version FM 2019 cannot use all the RAM which you have.

With FM 2020 FrameMaker got its own PDF creation feature. You do not have to use Distiller. (Although you can use Distiller via printing to a PostScript file or via Distiller set in the Publish pod.)

Therefore I recommend to install a trial version of FM 2022 (with all updates) and create your PDF. If it does not create your PDFs considerably faster, deinstall it and do a repair installation of FM 2019.

Best regards, Winfried

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi @dharding1 :

Printing the book to PDF using "Press Quality" settings (for handing off to a commercial printer) takes over 30 minutes to run.

Have you tried File > Save as PDF from the book window, which uses the last settings defined in the Publish Pod? (If you need to tweak them, you can open the Publish Pod with File > Publish.) This should be faster than what you are experiencing now.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

Bob_Niland

Community Expert

Is this Publish-to-PDF, Save-as-PDF, Print-to-PDF, or Print-to-Ps&Distill?

In Task Manager, are "Disk" and "Network" also quiet?
And if not, are all files local?
How large does the .pdf end up being?

I'd love to be mistaken, but as far as I know, FM is still largely single-threaded, and if so, a 15THz CPU core would be helpful.🙄

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