Slow printing performance

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   I am using QuickPDF for a .Net project that involves printing of 11x17 (Ledger) size pages containing sizable black and white scanned images (mostly scanned text) and am seeing very slow printing speed. The documents are being printed to HP's Universal PCL Print Driver which is configured to print to file. A 36 page document, for example, takes in excess of two minutes to print on a fast development machine with an SSD drive.

The reason for this post is that I am seeing much better printing performance with Adobe Acrobat (under 15 seconds) and the trial version of the DynamicPDF library (under 8 seconds). I also tried the Aspose .Net PDF library and it is about 40% faster than QuickPDF for the same document.

Is there anything that can be done to improve QuickPDF printing performance? I have already tried setting the print resolution to 300 dpi which is the same resolution as the scanned images. The pages are also being printed full size with scaling disabled. Performance seems marginally better using the 64-bit version of QuickPDF.

Running the Delphi version of the application under Eric Grange's Sampling Profiler shows that most of the time is being spent in a GDI call (~57%). The GDI call appears to be related to copying bitmaps which makes sense given the heavy graphics content of the PDF.

Best Regards,
David

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dtaylor Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 09 Nov 13 Location: US Status: Offline Points: 4	Post Options Post Reply Quote dtaylor Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Slow printing performance Posted: 09 Nov 13 at 7:14PM
	I am using QuickPDF for a .Net project that involves printing of 11x17 (Ledger) size pages containing sizable black and white scanned images (mostly scanned text) and am seeing very slow printing speed. The documents are being printed to HP's Universal PCL Print Driver which is configured to print to file. A 36 page document, for example, takes in excess of two minutes to print on a fast development machine with an SSD drive. The reason for this post is that I am seeing much better printing performance with Adobe Acrobat (under 15 seconds) and the trial version of the DynamicPDF library (under 8 seconds). I also tried the Aspose .Net PDF library and it is about 40% faster than QuickPDF for the same document. Is there anything that can be done to improve QuickPDF printing performance? I have already tried setting the print resolution to 300 dpi which is the same resolution as the scanned images. The pages are also being printed full size with scaling disabled. Performance seems marginally better using the 64-bit version of QuickPDF. Running the Delphi version of the application under Eric Grange's Sampling Profiler shows that most of the time is being spent in a GDI call (~57%). The GDI call appears to be related to copying bitmaps which makes sense given the heavy graphics content of the PDF. Best Regards, David

ixm7 Members Profile Find Members Posts Senior Member Joined: 13 Jan 06 Status: Offline Points: 68	Post Options Post Reply Quote ixm7 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 07 Dec 13 at 2:10PM
	Did you find a solution to the slow printing speed problem?

dtaylor Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 09 Nov 13 Location: US Status: Offline Points: 4	Post Options Post Reply Quote dtaylor Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 07 Dec 13 at 5:35PM
	We did not resolve the printing problem using Quick PDF, but found that Dynamic PDF performed 10x faster printing the same files. The downside is we needed to purchase another license that has a per-server deployment cost.

ixm7 Members Profile Find Members Posts Senior Member Joined: 13 Jan 06 Status: Offline Points: 68	Post Options Post Reply Quote ixm7 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 07 Dec 13 at 6:34PM
	That's disappointing. Perhaps Rowan would be kind enough to step in and provide an explanation/solution. I'm wondering: have you tried to solve the issue by doing a command line call to request silent printing via Adobe Reader?

dtaylor Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 09 Nov 13 Location: US Status: Offline Points: 4	Post Options Post Reply Quote dtaylor Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 07 Dec 13 at 9:06PM
	Adobe prints the same documents at a comparable speed to DynamicPDF. This is one of the reasons I decided to look into alternate printing solutions. It would be great if QuickPDF could be optimized to handle this scenario better since it is not uncommon to find PDFs which contain large scanned images.

Ingo Members Profile Find Members Posts Moderator Group Joined: 29 Oct 05 Status: Offline Points: 3524	Post Options Post Reply Quote Ingo Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 09 Dec 13 at 9:43AM
	Hi! QuickPDF renders to bitmap before printing. So why not change the standard renderer(GDI+) to Cairo: http://www.debenu.com/docs/pdf_library_reference/SelectRenderer.php Another try: What about avoid GDI+ via SetGDIPlusOptions: http://www.debenu.com/docs/pdf_library_reference/SetGDIPlusOptions.php Cheers and welcome here, Ingo
	Cheers, Ingo

ixm7 Members Profile Find Members Posts Senior Member Joined: 13 Jan 06 Status: Offline Points: 68	Post Options Post Reply Quote ixm7 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 09 Dec 13 at 1:30PM
	Ingo, thanks for for this very useful information. Looks like we should try a command line call to request silent printing via Adobe Reader.

AndrewC Members Profile Find Members Posts Moderator Group Joined: 08 Dec 10 Location: Geelong, Aust Status: Offline Points: 841	Post Options Post Reply Quote AndrewC Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 21 Jan 14 at 12:10AM
	We are currently expending some effort into improving the printing speed and reducing spool file sizes. There should be some improvements in Debenu Quick PDF Library 10.13. Andrew.

ixm7 Members Profile Find Members Posts Senior Member Joined: 13 Jan 06 Status: Offline Points: 68	Post Options Post Reply Quote ixm7 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 21 Jan 14 at 1:59AM
	Much appreciated!

Rowan Members Profile Find Members Posts Moderator Group Joined: 10 Jan 09 Status: Offline Points: 398	Post Options Post Reply Quote Rowan Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 21 Jan 14 at 3:11AM
	If anyone would like to take part in our beta program for the new printing improvements please sign up for our beta programs on this page: http://www.debenu.com/beta-programs/

Natalia Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 10 Aug 15 Status: Offline Points: 12	Post Options Post Reply Quote Natalia Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 10 Aug 15 at 10:10PM
	Hello, We are using Debenu Quick PDF library 11.15, and still see that, when printing specific large files, the files created by Debenu is much larger than the ones created by another library, and the performance is slower. We tried workarounds suggested by Ingo, but the problem was not solved. When using SelectRenderer(3), the amount of consumed memory was even higher, consuming all available memory (8GB). Printing using SetGDIPlusOptions(0, 0) printed text, but removed all images. Is there other solution for the problem? Thanks, Natalia.

ixm7 Members Profile Find Members Posts Senior Member Joined: 13 Jan 06 Status: Offline Points: 68	Post Options Post Reply Quote ixm7 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 11 Aug 15 at 12:28AM
	See the new PrintMode option in the documentation.

Natalia Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 10 Aug 15 Status: Offline Points: 12	Post Options Post Reply Quote Natalia Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 11 Aug 15 at 3:48PM
	I tried changing PrintMode, and it did not affect the output size. The same file was created when setting PrintMode to 0, 1 and 2. PrintMode returned corresponding value indicating that it was set.