PDF Export VERY slow

[jbefumo]

Hi,

I've been working with InDesign for several months now & really like it. I've done about a half dozen titles with no problems. My most recent project, however, includes quite a few B&W illustrations. When I export with "Spreads" checked, everything works normally. When I
uncheck spreads, however, it takes a LONG time. How long? Well, I thus far I've let it run for 3 days and it's still
chugging away -- all the way up to page 160 (of 298). When I go to my task manager it shows CPU pegged at 100%, with InDesign eating up 95-99%. Memory usage is a pretty consistent 300M, so I'm assuming it isn't any kind of memory leak. The machine is a low-end AMD 2.6Ghz with
1Gig of memory and lots of disk space. (There doesn't appear to be a lot of I/O going on anyway).

All of the images (there are 40 in all) are B&W grayscale saves ad .tif. I've gone through and relinked everything just to make sure.

Guess that's about all I can think of that might be relevant to the problem. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Joe

 

[jimoblak]

What version of InDesign? (including the point)

There have been long document updates freely downloadable from adobe.com that might resolve this issue.

You really should not let something export over 3 days. If it does not export in half an hour you should quit the process.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[jbefumo]

It's version 3.0. I tried the "Updates" item from the Help Menu and it says there are no updates. Thanks again,

Joe

 

[jimoblak]

3.0 should update to 3.0.1 (April 2005 Update)

If you cannot update from the Help menu, try going to adobe.com's download page.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[jbefumo]

I did download the upgrade to 3.0.1 & just installed it. No change. Very perplexing. I'm REALLY hoping I don't have to go back and redo this using Quark (yuch!).

Joe

 

[jbefumo]

What really confuses me is the fact that it works fine when I export with the "Spreads" checkbox checked, but not when it's cleared. Does this suggest anything?

 

[jimoblak]

Enabling spreads seems like an issue with an element falling across pages. Without seeing your layout, it would ba difficult to diagnose.

If you have Acrobat, have you tried printing to a PDF instead of exporting to PDF?

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[jbefumo]

Yup, tried that. I also tried installing the latest version (7.0, I think) of Adobe Acrobat. Still no go.

Not sure if it means anything, but the progress bar says: "Downloading resource." ??

 

[jimoblak]

Downloading resource means it is taking its time processing a placed image or font: resources used in the generated postscript.

Try File>Flightcheck to verify all is well.

If this yields no further information. Try the old troubleshooting trick of printing/exporting sections of your document until you find the buggy page.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[jbefumo]

Thanks for the Flightcheck tip. I'll try that when I get home (don't have all the same fonts on my system at work).

As for the troubleshooting trick -- already tried that --

Did a binary search, repeatedly cutting the file into right & left sides, & trying to export each. I get down to the point where I have 4 suspect pages that don't export, then when I split that into 2 & 2, both of them export just fine. Very strange.

Joe

 

[jbefumo]

Well, last night I went through the document and remved every graphic box. When I ran Preflight, it still showed one enbedded rgb object. I have no idea what it could be, or if indeed that's what's causing the problem.

What I've decided to do is simply create a new file, recreate all the master pages, and move the page objects one page at at time, versioning my work and checking export between every chapter. Painful, but do-able.

Joe

 

[jimoblak]

Before doing that, try opening your buggy document and a fresh new one-page document tiled side by side. While your buggy document is active, select all of the pages in the pages palette. Drag those pages onto the new document window. This may be a quick way to recreate your document without the bug.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[jbefumo]

Ah, great idea! Thanks so much.

Joe

 

[jbefumo]

Oh well -- good try, but it didn't work. Shouldn't take me more than a few hours to move the whole thing page by page. Thanks again.

Joe