There was a problem reading this document (11) when using action wizard

[AutomotiveITServices]

Hello,

i am trying to optimize about 25.000 pdf's. After exactly 250 PDF's the process stops and the following error occurs:

This is the action i am trying to use:

I want to do a Optimize Scanned Pages for all the pdf's in the folder PDFCONVERSIE.

When checking the memory usage i see that after every PDF which is converted the memory usage is increasing.
It looks like a memory leak.
Because Acrobat can use max 2 GIG it stops after (every time) 250 conversions.

I am using the latest Adobe Acrobat DC (Pro) version:

Any suggestions?
I hoped there was an option to run it via batch (command-line) but didn't find this option in Adobe Acrobat.

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Does it always stop after 250 documents - even when you process a different subset of your documents?

Acrobat’s action feature is not robust enough to run an unlimited number of jobs. There are resource leaks in Acrobat (at least that’s What it looks like from the outside) that create a limit of how many documents you can process in one batch. What this number is depends on the documents and the processing steps in your action. Try to limit your batches to 200 or even 100 documents and see if that makes a difference.

There is no option to run an action via the command line.

[AutomotiveITServices]

Yes it stops every time after 250 documents. And it doesn't matter if there are 25.000, 1.000 or 500 documents in the folder.
Smaller batches are indeed a solution but this was my first test with 25.000 documents. But there are 660.000 documents i have to compress.
Adobe seems the only tool who can do it this efficient. I have tried it with gostscript too, but that doesn't do this task efficient enough.

Thanks for your ractions Carl and Try67

[try67]

Acrobat is definitely not the tool for this job, I'm afraid.

[AutomotiveITServices]

it looks like.
Strange... we bought this product for this compression job.
It has the possibility to handle folders. But because of memory issues the tool is useless.

[Dave Merchant]

Acrobat is intentionally not optimized to handle proper "bulk file" operations, as it would be competing against Adobe's LiveCycle enterprise software (now part of Experience Manager).

[AutomotiveITServices]

> Acrobat is intentionally not optimized to handle proper "bulk file" operations...

Oh It looks like Adobe Acrobat can handle larger number of pdf's, but because of the memory leak it stops.
If Adobe Acrobat was a 64 bit applicatation it would take longer before this bug occurs.

What i don't understand: Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Destiller can handle large number of documents (without memory leaks), only this
type of conversion seems a problem in Acrobat. Am i the only one who does this type of conversion?

By the way: I was searching for an option to report this bug and hope that Acrobat would fix it. But only find this forum.

[try67]

Acrobat is not really built to process that many files, as you saw.

From my experience, around 500 files is the most it can handle in a single operation (depending on the file size, complexity, amount of memory available, etc.). This might be even more limited if the files first have to be downloaded from the cloud.

And no, it can't be done via the command-line, either.

[ls_rbls]

All questions seem to answered . I don't know if all your PDF files that need to be optimized are just for  a large print or if they are actually PDF forms with calculated fields and interactive forms and such.

If your file optimization is just to reduce file size to accomplish a bulk press quality print, for example, then I have to ask if you have tried saving the pdf files as encapsulated postscript?

What if , just what if... if instead you disable the PDF Optimizer capability and  use a batch script to convert your PDF files  to EPS . And depending on how you are able to configure the settings for the actual "saving as" file conversion, a file size reduction is achieved.

You would still need the optimizer plugin installed in your Acrobat product to achieve the example suggested above. The following information  I found it to be very interesting:

This tool is commercial though : AutoBatch™ plug-in and in order  to add it to your Acrobat as a plugin you need to get it from here:  h t t p s://www.evermap.com/Tutorial_ABT_BatchOptimizingPDF.asp

More resourceful info here: h t t p s://www.prepressure.com/library/file-formats/eps

The problem still remains. At the end of the day , when using it with Acrobat it wil converted back to PDF if you open your EPS files with it.

In any case, it is still worth trying and opening your EPS files with an EPS file viewer, then print your files to hard copies (if that is what you are trying to achieve with your PDF files of course).

[AutomotiveITServices]

Hello ls_rbls,
yes i have tried the other options too (because they work a lot quicker than this optimize option) but we have PDF's that really need this conversion.
We have PDF's with a watermark in it. They are 6 pages long and are about 1.5 MB. After conversion they are just 60KB.
That means our invoice archive will shrink back from 120GB to less than 12.

[ls_rbls]

I posted something back and the content was moderated and deleted.

In short, I was trying to suggest, for you to try  PDF Utilities, PDF Formatter.

It has batch script capability, is fast and it is free, and it does not require adobe products to be installed for it to work.

I had additional  information for you posted here but it seems like it was deleted.

[Dave Merchant]

ls_rbls  wrote

I posted something back and the content was moderated and deleted.

These forums are part of Adobe Customer Care. Promotion of third party products is forbidden except as defined by the Terms of Use. As a brand-new user you do not qualify to post ads, and attempts to bypass the moderation system by obfuscating web addresses will get you banned.

[ls_rbls]

Hello Dave Merchant,

I am federal government employee  and due to the “attempts to bypass the moderation system by obfuscating web addresses will get you banned” notice that you posted back in your message, I would like to take this opportunity to establish with no animosity a positive rapport for the record.

I actually read the Terms of Use that you linked in your reply which is referenced by clicking on the link you provided or by typing this URL address  https://forums.adobe.com/docs/DOC-7044 in a web browser.

The link you provided in your notice is not an obfuscated URL; I actually understood very clearly what a brand new user should abide to when posting information in these Adobe forums.

I am also very clear about not advertising 3^rd party products (even though that in this particular thread it was a genuine attempt to help another fellow user in the community without asking to get paid for offering help).

This also  includes the Adobe General Terms of Use, which is annexed in the Terms of Use (and I also read it in an attempt  to understand other legal binding issues)  found here: https://www.adobe.com/legal/terms.html

To be as clear as I can,  I  didn’t find in any of the documents mentioned above what the Adobe forums consider as obfuscating when you type an address like this:

H T T P: / / www.adobe.com/legal/terms.html

And because of the actual definition of URL obfuscation out there in the WorldWide Web, my inquiry is more of an observation to bring forward to the Moderators ‘ attention.

According to three different online sources,  the definitions are  shown below:

Webopedia: “By Vangie Beal”

Also called a hyperlink trick, an obfuscated URL is a type of attack where the real URL that a user is directed to is obfuscated - or concealed - to encourage the user to click-through to the spoof Web site.

TECHNOPEDIA DEFINITION:

Attackers usually use a common misspelling technique where they misspell a domain name to trick users into visiting. These obfuscated URLs can be a cause of malware entering a user’s computer system.

URL obfuscation is used together with spamming, redirecting users using a misleading URL that leads to a malicious site

F-Secure DEFINITION

An obfuscated URL is a URL that has been modified to conceal the legitimate location of a web-based resource, such as a website or server.

Is this is what the Adobe Forums  moderators discover during the course of extensive search and backtracking the “offending” user’s online activity ?

In any case, the intentional misspelling of the web site address would still need to match a defined IP address that redirects the user to that specific web server. (please correct me if I am wrong).

In other words, if we go by the online definitions of URL Obfuscation, when a user who is providing help to another user is whacked with a notice like the one you posted  about URL obfuscation, that moderator better backup with evidence that such user was actually trying to obfuscate an URL with the intention to exploit other users, mislead, attack, spam, phish, and/or scam.

In the face to face world,  this could be looked more like  a slanderous accusation, where the user in question would loose any grounds to prove anything in its defense as he/she gets profiled by the moderating authority.

Maybe this should be brought to the legal team’s attention so that the Terms of Use can offer in greater detail  what URL obfuscation  is meant in the Adobe community  forums.

In the slide shown, you can see a clear example of no moderation whatsoever in the following thread (probably because there is no URL quoting involved, yet it is still inappropriate):

[Dave Merchant]

New users are forbidden from advertising third party products and services, no matter who they are. TOU 5.2L is perfectly clear about that, and does not restrict the concept of "promotion" to posting hyperlinks. Someone saying in plaintext "You should use SuperTools from XYZ, it's much better than Photoshop" or embedding a promotional image is treated the same. The team of staff and moderators read most threads within minutes, and users report any content that slips through the net. We review hundreds of items every day. Even users with good standing will have their content removed if they promote something against the rules.

Any post with a well-formatted off-site hyperlink is intercepted by the content filter and held for review. Deliberately mis-typing a URL with extra spaces so it is readable by a human but not detected by the content filter, something only ever done intentionally to trick the algorithm, is obfuscation and is prohibited.

As to our language filter, the decision to allow obfuscation depends on context. There are cases where a banned word exists legitimately in other languages, or has several meanings. Since the language filter is real-time and for obvious reasons Adobe will never publish the word list, we consider posts on a case-by-case basis. All moderation decisions are final.

End of discussion; back to the original topic.

[ls_rbls]

Understood. Read you load and clear, and thank you for taking the time to clarify so thoruoghly.

[ls_rbls]

Hello AutimotiveITServices,

I am curious about one thing you kept bringing to the forum's attention and is about the memory leak.

How were you able to determine it is an actual memory leak in the application?

Could it be possible if a memory leak is actually occuring somewhere else within the operating system, shared apps, printer or scanning device drivers?

Is there a way that you can retrieve an error or crash log from windows when this happens?

[ls_rbls]

So, I went ahead re-read your post more carefully; you've produced a lot of interesting observations.

I am also going to include some referenced URLs here with the intent of sharing a solution (in no way will it be advertising or promoting other software as per the off-topic discussion earlier):

The first thing I would like to address is that from a memory leak POV, if you really want to plunge in that area you will have to try and produce  a benchmark environment between a computer runnuing Windows 10, a computer running a well known working Linux distribution on the same hardware as your Windows 10 machine,  and/or additionally try the same scenario on a Mac.

This would be a real objective approach to see the behavior(s) of a possible memory leak when the software in questions is deployed as a file compression tool.

But besides that being a point in all of this, if you still like to catch a possible memory leak  in your Windows 10 you need to download  the WinDbg app from the Microsoft WebApp Store and learn how to use it in order to really analyze different memory dumps that could be related to the program(s) that you suspect are causing the heaps or leaks, plus the same should be considered in the hardware aspects of that system which are continuously interacting with the Internet,  your software apps, and memory allocations via device drivers instructins and BIOS settings).

To download the WinDbg app

Now, starting from the last line of your post to the beginning of this thread you asked

"Any suggestions? I hoped there was an option to run it via batch (command-line) but didn't find this option in Adobe Acrobat."

And this is the question  that was the question that was most relevant to me:

In the past, Adobe Acrobat Distiller used to be downloaded as a separate program from Adobe Acrobat Reader and Pro products.

At least that used to be true for me when using debian-based linux distributions in some of my work computers (and this was before Adobe discontinued the support for Open Source versions of Adobe Acrobat products).

As for the paid subscription licensing model, I don't know if  a user can try to install  a more recent version of Acrobat and be able to make it to work, if in combination or by adding  additional open source software like CrossOver,  Play on Linux and/or Wine; This, however,  could be tedious if not worse than what you are trying to figure out right now, and it also  may violate the most current licensing agreements ( and no vendor customer support  of course).

The reason I mentioned earlier about my prior experience with installing the Distiller as a separate product in a Linux distribution is as follows:

"How do I convert a File to .pdf using a .BAT file"

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/892616

The thread described above  goes hand in hand with the fact that you also mentioned   trying to use Ghostscript to circumvent the problem.

I am no programmer, but from what I am reading you may be able to create your own batch script (.BAT) in a text file to run it in your Windows computer;  and the cool thing about batch scripting  is that you may be able to  incorporate the postscript to pdf tool (ps2pdf) in that batch script.

ps2pdf, should be already bundled with the Ghostscript conversion tools suite that you've downloaded; I am unsure if, when you say that you have used the Ghostscript you are doing it via GUI or command line though.

I am stressing the difference between GUI or CLI because from further reading it is documented  that you can get fast compression results without sacrificing image quality if you use the ps2pdf tool in combination with the Adobe Acrobat Distiller parameters.

You can try the following guide from Windows or a Linux computer and compare which one results in better performance to your situation.

For a good simple guide and tutorial Creating PDF files with ps2pdf | Linux.com | The source for Linux information

For a list of Adobe Acrobat Distiller Parameters that you can use in combination with ps2pdf check in here:

ps2pdf: PostScript-to-PDF converter

and a how-to on  compatibility switch https://linux.die.net/man/1/ps2pdf