How to speed up PDF generation in InDesign

[tonyrush]

One of the main tasks that we do in our office is:

A.  Merging an original InDesign file (approx 7.5Mb) with a CSV file;

B.  Exporting that resulting merged document into a PDF file

During export, we've tried different Adobe PDF Presets:  (High Quality Print, Press Quality, Smallest File Size, PDF/X-4, etc.)   The "Smallest File Size" preset seems to be the fastest although not by much.  It generally takes 3-5 minutes to create the merged document which seems a bit slow.  

But the real sluggishness is when we export that merged document into PDF format.  It takes anywhere from 4-8 minutes and the resulting PDF is only about 2.3Mb in size. 

We've tried this on multiple machines.  One is an iMac 3.5Ghz Quad Core i7 processor with 32Gb of 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM.  The other is a Macbook Pro with 2.6 Ghz 6-core i7 processor and 16Gb 2400 Mhz DDR4 RAM.  There's not really thimble's worth of difference in the export time.  They pretty much run neck and neck and, when they don't, either one might outperform the other.

Anyway, I have two questions:

A.  Is there anything I can do to speed up this process?  It takes HOURS of our day for one staff member to create these PDFs.  And most of that time is spent just waiting for the machine.

B.  What part of the computer is most integral to this kind of task?  In other words, if I choose to get a new Mac before the end of the year -- and had to choose -- would I want to go with the fastest processor...or the most RAM?  Which would give us the biggest boost in speed for this kind of work?

Thanks in advance.  I appreciate your help and would be happy to provide more information if it will help give a better answer.

[Eugene Tyson]

@tonyrush have you had any improvements or updates?

[Dirk Becker]

Network files and images were already mentioned.

Another trouble candidate would be fonts - e.g. if your machine is loaded with thousands of fonts, or if the document somewhere refers to missing fonts that have to get substituted. In such a case I've watched InDesign burning some (ehm) time with TypeKit nowadays known as Adobe Fonts even when the option was disabled in CC general control. Not sure whether that is still a problem, could also depend on the mood of the used servers.

You can also attempt to track down the offending subsystem. From Application >> Utilities launch the Activity Monitor app of OSX and target InDesign. Perform your export and somewhere into it where the lengthy operation is likely showing, sample the process. This should give at least some impression in what component (i.e. plug-in file) the time is spent. Like with crash dumps, upload the result to a pastebin service or alike and share the link.

[Sherry @ Lacy & Par]

No solutions, but watching this thread because I have the same issue.

Doing a postcard data merge, I've taken out all the graphics and created the merged INDD files to be text only overprints. I have 8 INDD files each with 4,000 pages (half of which are blank) and each file is taking a half hour to create a single PDF.... IF it creates a PDF at all, before it crashes. 

Running a 3.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, 40 GB memory and saving to the internal hard drive. 

I know the Data Merge in InDesign is buggy, but it seems to be getting worse.

Thanks for letting me sit in 🙂

It's always been slow, but recently it's practically non-functional.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@sherry @ Lacy & Par

Can you split to smaller files? Like 1000 pages max? Or even less.

InDesign is still single-thread application - so GHz counts - not number of cores. 

Can you show your design? Maybe instead of DataMerge - Text could be imported in a different way?