Producing :30 TV Commercials

I want to Motion into my workflow producing :30 sec. spots. Currently, we're doing 95% in Fincal Cut, including most text (some LiveType), gradients, transition FX, etc.
Since Motion doesn't require as much time consuming rendering like FCP, I'm thinking Motion could speed up my workflow quite a bit. Are any of you making TV utilizing Motion for most of it? If so, how have you figured out what do do in Motion versus Fincal Cut?
Since most spots have clear sections that use trasitions many times (like a cube spin for example), would I do each section in Motion, export with transparency then do the transition in Final Cut? Also, is it better to drop the footage in Final Cut?
Thanks for any tips.

Many people use Motion for TV spots - but don't think you won't have to render. Whether you drop it into FCP, or export it into another NLE, it'll still need rendering (unless you were talking about real-time previews). As for what to use it for, well map out the project and build your pieces from there. Some people swear by the text generators in FCP, or Boris, others (myself included)prefer Livetype for text. I use Motion for graphics but not for compositing (I use FCP, shake if it's heavy). Lastly, yes I import motion projects directly into FCP, and I would highly recommend doing so. No need to export movies and such, when FCP can handle the project files. Last bit of advice (repetitive) - Plan it out. Run tests, develop a workflow that lets you create... nothing is worse than constantly thinking " will this work?".
go forth...

Similar Messages

Premiere Pro CS6 Export issues

We are using CS6.1 on Dell platforms and Mac's in the studio and we produce long form commercials. We are missing all of our deadlines becasue we cannot export these 29 minute films. We also have issues with exporting to SpeedGrade and simply gave up. I have four TV shows that I cannot get off these computers. Further the dynamic linking literally sucks. sometimes you can open a JPEG in Photoshop and save it with the changes appearing in CS6 and sometimes not. We cannot export through Project Manger or export as an AVI, or any other codec for that matter. We never had any problems with CS5.
Right now I am having to transfer to a deck to get the files ready for broadcast check. It seems that when you only have few seconds of video it works fine, but it goes to hell in a hand basket after that.
Does anyone have a workaround or can you tell us what we are doing wrong?
Right now I am putting all the new shows on AVID for editing, at least that works.
Bob Killen
BKFA Productions

Hi Bob,
How are you exporting the sequence? Give us some details so we can help you out.
Here are the guidelines for getting your details.

Jerky HD footage playback

New work system with a new 5,1 MacPro running 10.6.4 FCP 6.0.6
Started getting very jerky 1080p playback of clips in the Viewer not happening all the time though. This doesn't affect the clips when they are in the timeline though.

Exactly Mr Frog
I have also had problems wit the Viewer today...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2612742
I can appreciate your views on the sequence preset but when working on a new MacPro and producing 20 & 30sec commercials rendering isn't an issue and as I've mentioned there are other steps in the production line that would be impacted if the export from the timeline was to be a 1920x1080 QT file because I would then have to convert that to my desired format(s) in the rest of the workflow!
There is definitely something going on with the viewer display and how it is displaying clips and even the background viewer (see above thread)
Please note there isn't and has never been a problem with the sequence and playback of the sequence.

Need tutorial on how to produce video

I can't find this anywhere. I need to find a tutorial of some kind that will teach me how to produce video using still images and vector art among other non-video things.
It needs to be from the ground up as I've really only been poking around in it (and Premiere and Soundbooth) for about a week.
Windows XP
CS3 Master Collection
computer designed and built for the software

Man, I was hoping you wouldn't say CIB. I have the Flash one and while it's a little informative, I can't say I'm impressed with it. However, it may give me the foundation I'm looking for here.
I'm already fairly well versed in Illy; will just need to learn how to take that knowledge and apply it to video resolutions (this aspect ratio thing of 0.9 and 1.2 has got me spinning when I can't figure out how to properly view a finished product as it will be seen on something other than a computer screen).
Six weeks may be a bit too long. What I need first is basically something a tad better than a decent Powerpoint presentation for DV. I don't need to produce something right off the bat that we'll use for TV commercials; I just need to show the higher-ups that the money they invested in this software (that we were on schedule to buy last September instead purchased last month) was worth it.
I have no doubt that experience is a major factor here. But I'm barely treading water here. If I don't find a surfboard soon, I'll drown. However, based on what's been done for us by "professionals" in the past, the bar isn't set very high for me.
I haven't bothered with any of the GTA games. They don't make that for PCs, do they? I'm not a gaming console guy.
Dropping stuff in the project window I have down no problem; it's knowing what needs to be done beforehand to the files I'll drop there and how to accurately preview them that's raising my blood pressure.
Knowing I won't knock anything out of the park any time soon, I've started small: a 2.5 second "signature" to be placed at the end of a commercial or segment. Black screen, PS-treated background element with a minor scaling effect, and logo with a short wave file. I thought I had that relatively simple thing figured out, but I can't seem to find a way to view it as it would appear on a widescreen TV. It's just stretched and I can't tell if it just looks like that on my computer screen because of how that displays aspect ratio and it will look fine on our widescreens in the stores or not.
If I can figure out that 2.5 spot, I may just have a chance at figuring out how to create the rest of it.
Thanks for the good luck... I know I'll need it.

Broadcast Quality Commercials

Pardon the newbie question, but it has been 20 years since I produced commercials. I have played with iMovie and FCE over the last several years, but now am looking at getting back into video production. With FCE 4, can I:
1) Use manufacturer-supplied video tracks/commercials supplied on beta, dub to a mini-DV cassette, import into FCE 4?
2) Produce/export a broadcast quality master of the assembled commercial with FCE 4?
3) Export the final commercial to the miniDV recorder and supply to broadcaster and expect good quality?
Thanks for the input.

I think I get what you mean. Back when I was head of an ad agency in the '80's, I taught electronic publishing and set up a lot of agencies, printers, newspapers, etc. While early gen electronic publishing had its limitations, when used within those limitations, you could produce stunning material. However, in the hands of untalented, untrained people, it did end up turing out a lot of cr*p (and still does!).
My main point in this thread was, is it worth my time learning FCE4 (given that it will take reading yours and other books, etc.), a lot of playing, trial and error? If in the end I can achieve broadcast quality, great. I just didn't want to go down the path if in the end it still looked like home video.
By the way, I used to have a partner in the yacht business named Wolsky.
Thanks for the input. Look forward to reading your book.

So you wanna make some commercials...What format?

Hi,
I've noticed that a lot of local TV commercials are down right bad. I've concluded I can do a far superior job using my Mac, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Protools, and Photoshop.
My question is this.... What is the best format to hand to a TV station. I believe the standard is a Sony DV deck. Should I think about buying one of these? What If I am about to upgrade to a High Definition Camera (I'm looking at the Panasonic HDV-200). Most of the local stations are not in high definition.... yet....
Also is it required that I put color bars and a minus 20db header? Most spots are exactly 30 seconds... correct?
Thanks,
Gary

The reason most local TV commercials are poor is that they are done for free. Many local stations produce the commercials as a loss leader to sell the air time.
It is hard to compete with free.
To answer your questions:
Each TV station has its own standards for delivery. Beta SP is common. Some are taking DG Fastchannel (internet delivery – google it.) Some require digital beta. Other stuff too – talk to the stations directly. The sony DV deck is not standard at TV stations.
If you upgrade to a prosumer HD camera your camera original footage will look better. In general, edit in the native format and down convert and crop for SD delivery. Remember to shoot 4x3 safe.
Bars and tone are standard, but stations have their own needs and desires for what is included in the slate, whether or not there is a count down, time code starts, etc. Talk to the stations.
Most spots are 30 seconds, but there are 20 second spots also. Occasionally a one minute spot.
Your idea is a good one, but a very uphill sales job.
Convincing a small, local business to pay you for several days of work with gear when they can have a commercial produced by the local TV Station for free is a tough slog until you have proven work.
Your work will have to look very good, but more importantly, you will have to show evidence that your clients see a return on investment. That is, your clients will have to be doing better with their commercial in terms of actual sales than the businesses who choose the free commercial from the station.
Best of luck.
Tom

Remote system Producing Errors "In sufficient Privileges" while running scr

Hi
I have Machine with Oracle 10g 64bit(software only) on windows 2003 server and that machine located at Remotely(UK)
In fact i d'not know who installed the Oracle on that machine,
To access that mechine they given user/password to me
Now I have to run a script from here(script will create INSTANCE,OFA,DATABASE,changing SYS SYSTEM password,and final it create USER for that DATABSE which is created by script)
here problem is script able to Create INSTANCE,OFA but it unable to create DATABASE in this part it is giving Error saying that
"In sufficient Privileges"
I tried with Command prompt like
setted Oracle_sid,Oracle_home
1.C:>sqlplus sys/change_on_install as sysdba
or
2.C:>sqlplus system/manager
3.SQL>startup nomount pfile='<pfilepath>"
In above 3 cases it is giving same error “ In sufficient Privileges"
1.What may be that reason it is producing errors

Try adding the windows user you're logging in with to the windows machine to the Administrators group. Also check the persmissions of the pfile and subdirectories.
Alex

Unable to create report. Query produced too many results

Hi All,
Does someone knows how to avoid the message "Unable to create report. Query produced too many results" in Grid Report Type in PerformancePoint 2010. When the mdx query returns large amount of data, this message appears. Is there a way to get all
the large amount in the grid anyway?
I have set the data Source query time-out under Central Administration - Manager Service applications - PerformancePoint Service Application - PerformancePoint Service Application Settings at 3600 seconds.
Here Event Viewer log error at the server:
1. An exception occurred while running a report. The following details may help you to diagnose the problem:
Error Message: Unable to create report. Query produced too many results.
        <br>
        <br>
        Contact the administrator for more details.
Dashboard Name:
Dashboard Item name:
Report Location: {3592a959-7c50-0d1d-9185-361d2bd5428b}
Request Duration: 6,220.93 ms
User: INTRANET\spsdshadmin
Parameters:
Exception Message: Unable to create report. Query produced too many results.
Inner Exception Message:
Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Server.PmServer.ExecuteAnalyticReportWithParameters(RepositoryLocation analyticReportViewLocation, BIDataContainer biDataContainer)
   at Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Analytics.ServerRendering.OLAPBase.OlapViewBaseControl.ExtractReportViewData()
   at Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Analytics.ServerRendering.OLAPBase.OlapViewBaseControl.CreateRenderedView(StringBuilder sd)
   at Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.ServerRendering.NavigableControl.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer)
PerformancePoint Services error code 20604.
2. Unable to create report. Query produced too many results.
Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.BpmException: Unable to create report. Query produced too many results.
   at Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Server.Analytics.AnalyticQueryManager.ExecuteReport(AnalyticReportState reportState, DataSource dataSource)
   at Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Server.PmServer.ExecuteAnalyticReportBase(RepositoryLocation analyticReportViewLocation, BIDataContainer biDataContainer, String formattingDimensionName)
   at Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Server.PmServer.ExecuteAnalyticReportWithParameters(RepositoryLocation analyticReportViewLocation, BIDataContainer biDataContainer)
PerformancePoint Services error code 20605.
Thanks in advance for your help.

Hello,
I would like you to try the following to adjust your readerquotas.
Change the values of the parameters listed below to a larger value. We recommend that you double the value and then run the query to check whether the issue is resolved. To do this, follow these steps:
On the SharePoint 2010 server, open the Web.config file. The file is located in the following folder:
\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Web Services\PpsMonitoringServer\
Locate and change the the below values from 8192 to 16384.
Open the Client.config file. The file is located in the following folder:
\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\WebClients\PpsMonitoringServer\
Locate and change the below values from 8192 to 16384.
After you have made the changes, restart Internet Information Services (IIS) on the SharePoint 2010 server.
<readerQuotas
maxStringContentLength="2147483647"
maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647"
maxBytesPerRead="2147483647"
maxArrayLength="2147483647"
              maxDepth="2147483647"
/>
Thanks
Heidi Tr - MSFT
Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Creating an If Statement in Flex That Produces Multiple Results

I have created a small login window for my flex app and once the user enter's an appropriate username and password I want the username to be displayed at the top but I also want a new window to appear. To do this I require an if statement to be activated nce the user clicks on a sign in button which will either produce the text "Invalid username or password" or log the user in and do a couple of things. It is the doing a couple of things part that I'm struggling with. Here is my if statement so far that activates when the sign in button is clicked:-
if (usernameEntry.text=='usernametest' || passwordEntry.text=='passwordtest') loginNotificationLabel.text='You Are Logged In' || accountLinks.visible=true else loginNotificationLabel.text='Invalid Username or Password'
It is the || accountLinks.visible=true part that is giving me errors. Basically if the username and password are correct I want a new window I've created 'accountLinks' to become visible as well as the 'loginNotificationLabel' text to display the message "You Are Logged In" but I can't figure out how to get that particular statement to work.

Ok I've now changed it to this however compiling it produces the error "The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference". It was this error that made me use the || in the first place as I thought it was an alternative to && that may not produce the error:-
if ((usernameEntry.text=='usernametest') && (passwordEntry.text=='passwordtest')) {loginNotificationLabel.text='You Are Logged In'; accountLinks.visible=true;} else{loginNotificationLabel.text='Invalid Username or Password';}

Query produces duplicate values in successive rows. Can I null them out?

I've had very good success (Thanks Andy) in getting detailed responses to my posted questions, and I'm wondering whether there is a way in a report region join query that produces successive rows with duplicate values that I can suppress(replace) the print of the duplicate values in those rows. In case I've managed to twist the question into an unintelligible mess (One of my specialties), let me provide an example:
We're trying to list the undergraduate institutions that an applicant has attended, and display information about dates of attendence, gpa, and major(s)/minor(s) taken. The rub is that there can be multiple major(s)/minor(s) for a given undergraduate institution, so the following is produced by the query:
University of Hard Knox 01/02 01/06 4.00 Knitting
University of Hard Knox 01/02 01/06 4.00 Cloth Repair
Advanced University 02/06 01/08 3.75 Clothing Design
Really Advanced U 02/08 01/09 4.00 Sports Clothing
Really Advanced U 02/08 01/09 4.00 Tennis Shoe Burlap
I want it to look like this:
University of Hard Knox 01/02 01/06 4.00 Knitting
Cloth Repair
Advanced University 02/06 01/08 3.75 Clothing Design
Really Advanced U 02/08 01/09 4.00 Sports Clothing
Tennis Shoe Burlap
* (edit) Please note that the cloth repair and tennis shoe repair rows would be correctly positioned in a table, but unfortunately got space suppresed here for some reason. *
Under Andy's tuteage, I'd say the answer is probably javascript looping through the DOM looking for the innerHTML of specific TDs in the table, but I'd like to confirm that, or, does Apex provide a checkbox that I can check that will produce the same results? Thanks in advance guys, and sorry for all the questions. We've been tasked to use Apex for our next project and to learn it by using it, since the training budget is non-existant this year. I love unfunded mandates ;)
Phil
Edited by: Phil McDermott on Aug 13, 2009 9:34 AM

Hi Phil,
Javascript is useful, as is the column break functionality within Report Attributes (which would be my first choice if poss).
If you need to go past 3 columns, I would suggest doing something in the SQL statement itself. This will mean that the sorting would probably having to be controlled, but it is doable.
Here's a fairly old thread on the subject: Re: Grouping on reports (not interactive) - with an example here: [http://htmldb.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=33642:112] (I've even used a custom template for the report, but you don't need to go that far!)
This uses the LAG functionality within SQL to compare the values on one row to the values on the preceeding row - being able to compare these values allows you to determine which ones to display or hide.
Andy

Acrobat V9 Pro OCR can't produce a file

I am trying to perform OCR on a credit card statement. The statement has 3 PDF pages and except for the non-regular header info at the top of the page, everything is in nice columns - five of them. I specify the output file to be an excel spreadsheet. The OCR engine works OK on pages 1,3. It chokes on page 2 with an error that it cannot recognize any table OR sometimes produces this message: Acrobat could not perform recognition (OCR) on this page because: This page contains renderable text.
I tried the technote soln to convert to .tiff , but that did not work (actually the instruction are not clear: do you rerun OCR on the .tif file or the newly created .pdf that was made from the .tif file...no matter, I did both, and both failed)http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/333/333110.html
I have also seperated the .pdf doc into three individual files, and OCR'ed page two with same results.
I took page2.pdf, scanned it (not with Acrobat), at 600DPI, and tried to OCR it again, same results.
The page contains a bar code in the margin-could this be killing the OCR process? I tried to edit out some of the noise but can't figure out how to delete parts of the .pdf doc.
Also, I highlight only the colums, select Document-> OCR Text Recognition -> Recognize text using OCR....and it does its thing, says it generates output document, but....WHERE? It does not ask me where it should be placed, and I have no clue where it sticks it.....
Any help is appreciated....
JOhn
sample is below:

Really unresolved, but OK.

S/PDIF out produces static when playing audio, sometimes with video

This is my first install of Arch Linux, and I am a bit of a noob. I started using Arch because I wanted to learn, and it's been absolutely perfect--I actually love it so far, and this is the first major problem I've had. Most of the Arch documentation has been exceptional, however I've been working at this all afternoon and haven't come up with a solution. SO, here goes nothing:
My motherboard has a few analog, S/PDIF optical and coaxial, and HDMI audio outputs as native (although HDMI runs through an onboard Radeon 6xx family card). I use S/PDIF because my receiver doesn't have HDMI inputs.
The specifics:
In gnome-alsamixer, I have three tabs: USB Mixer, ATI R6xx HDMI, and Realtek ALC887-VD. The first tab has one PCM volume control, the ATI tab has nothing but a IEC958 checkbox at the bottom, and the Realtek tab has everything from master to input to surround sound settings.
In the console alsamixer, going to Select sound card has three options: 0 USB Audio CODEC, 1 HD-Audio Generic, and 2 HDA ATI SB. These correspond to the same three tabs above in the GUI. Selecting 1 shows an SPDIF output with no way to change the volume, only to mute or un-mute. WTF!
In GNOME sound settings, Output tab, I have for output selected Built-in Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958) with Connector: Digital Output (S/PDIF) selected at the bottom. In the Hardware tab I've selected Built-in Audio (1 Output, Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output). For some reason this program seems to prefer the first Built-In Audio option, which has two settings: Off, and HDMI audio. I do NOT want to use HDMI audio. It is currently turned off.
Some outputs that might be helpful:
[root@balerion atom]# uname -r
3.3.7-1-ARCH
[root@balerion atom]# pacman -Q alsa-lib
alsa-lib 1.0.25-1
[root@balerion atom]# lsmod | grep '^snd' | column -t
snd_hda_codec_realtek 114123 1
snd_hda_codec_hdmi 24120 1
snd_usb_audio 93519 1
snd_hda_intel 24021 2
snd_hda_codec 92713 3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek
snd_hwdep 6556 2 snd_hda_codec,snd_usb_audio
snd_usbmidi_lib 18744 1 snd_usb_audio
snd_rawmidi 18991 1 snd_usbmidi_lib
snd_seq_device 5300 1 snd_rawmidi
snd_pcm 74812 4 snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_codec_hdmi
snd_page_alloc 7217 2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 19222 1 snd_pcm
snd 59656 17 snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_seq_device,snd_rawmidi,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_u sb_audio,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek
[root@balerion atom]# ls -l /dev/snd
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 Jun 3 12:11 by-id
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 100 Jun 3 12:11 by-path
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 4 Jun 3 12:11 controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 7 Jun 3 12:11 controlC1
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 13 Jun 3 12:11 controlC2
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 6 Jun 3 12:11 hwC1D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 12 Jun 3 12:11 hwC2D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 3 Jun 3 15:42 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 2 Jun 3 15:42 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 5 Jun 3 12:48 pcmC1D3p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 11 Jun 3 15:42 pcmC2D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 10 Jun 3 13:20 pcmC2D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 9 Jun 3 16:04 pcmC2D1p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 8 Jun 3 15:42 pcmC2D2c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 1 Jun 3 12:11 seq
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 33 Jun 3 12:11 timer
[root@balerion atom]# lspci | grep Audio
00:01.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Wrestler HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6250/6310]
00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
Has anyone run into anything like this before, and have you emerged victorious? I'll be happy to answer any other questions for more details, of course. Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
atom
edit: skipping around on VLC while playing movies can produce some normal audio after a few seconds of static, however audio files have proven uesless. VLC is the only program that will play them so far and they've all been static.
Last edited by ohshitgorillas (2012-06-03 23:34:11)

it's the car, it's amp is likely doing something active with the audio streem which delay the signal a tiny bit

My iphone 4 when you upgrade the firmware on ios7.0.2 produced an error 3194

my iphone 4 when you upgrade the firmware on ios7.0.2 produced an error 3194 ... now my phone is not working ... every time an error 3194 ... I can not update ios and drop naturally I do not Pogue. hosts cleaned, cut off the antivirus ... did everything I recommend in this case ((what do I do? (
on other machines the same ...

Some additional suggestions here that may help if you haven't tried them:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts4451
Regards.

On the printing slowness of Postscript produced by the JVM from calls to Graphics.drawString() (Linux/Unix)

Happy new year,
before the holidays my attention was drawn to an issue that supposedly the Postscript produced by the JVM is too big and hence too slow. Here are my findings.
The issue
Text printing via CUPS to native Postscript printers can be slow. Printing a terms and conditions page (17000 characters/page) takes three and a half minutes to print on a Dell 2330 dn laser printer (96 MB,Max speed 33 ppm). The file is about 8 MB in size. To contrast that, rendering the text to a buffered image with 300 DPI and printing the result produces 7 MB of output which prints in 30 seconds on the same printer. More measures for different printers and documents can be found at the end of this post. The issues is registered as "JDK-4627340 : RFE: A way to improve text printing performance for postscript devices" (http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4627340) and the proposed workaround is to use printer fonts.
Side remark regarding the workaround
There is a regression that prevents the workaround from working (bug 9008662 at Sun (not yet visible), bug 8023990 at OpenJDK (https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8023990). Without knowing what other bad side effects this might have, the issue can be resolved by setting the property "sun.awt.fontconfig". On my system I set it to the location of a "fontconfig.properties" of a JVM that does not have the bug (e.g. /home/alex/openjdk_7_b147_jun_11/openjdk/build/linux-i586/bin/java -Dsun.awt.fontconfig="/etc/java-6-openjdk/fontconfig.properties" Print2DtoStream). I also successfully tested the workaround on an Oracle JVM 1.7.0_03-b04.
Back to the main topic
How the JVM draws text if it can't use a standard printer font
Text is drawn with postscript path drawning commands such as "moveto", "lineto" or "curveto". As an example consider the word "ll" which looks something like this:
%N->short for "newpath"
N
%paint first "l"
%M->short for "moveto"
0.76875 11.06 M
%L->short for "lineto"
0.76875 2.468 L
1.823 2.468 L
1.823 11.06 L
0.76875 11.06 L
%p->short for "closepath"
P
%paint second "l"
3.649 11.06 M
3.649 2.468 L
4.703 2.468 L
4.703 11.06 L
3.649 11.06 L
P
The same text could be printed with a printer font using the command "(ll) show" which is much more compact but is available in Java only for the Postscript standard fonts and it isn't working at all right now as explained above.
Is it the file size?
My first thought was that the file size was the source of of slowness and so I wrote a small processor that would detect glyphs, normalize*1 them and place them in a dictionary. Recurring references to the same glyph were replaced by a dictionary reference (This is incidentally the fix proposed by the original author of RFE 4627340). This shrunk the file to about 11% of the original size but the processing time surprisingly doubled.
*1: With "normalizing" I mean applying a translation transform so that the smallest coordinates in the contours of a glyph are exactly 0. In addition I experimented with performing a normalizing scale transform so that all coordinates lie between 0 and 1 so that identical glyphs are detected at arbitrary positions and at different font sizes.
That led to the question to why there is such a big difference in performance between a Type 1 font dictionary and a self constructed dictionary since both contain basically the same drawing instructions. The difference is apparently that fonts are cached and user drawings are not unless explicitly told.
The Postscript "ucache" instruction
Postscript level 2 introduces the "ucache" instruction which seems to be defined for precisely this kind of problem. From the documentation:
"Some PostScript programs define paths that are repeated many times. To optimize the interpretation of such paths, the PostScript language provides a facility called the user path cache. This cache, analogous to the font cache, retains the results from previously interpreted user path definitions. When the PostScript interpreter encounters a user path that is already in the cache, it substitutes the cached results instead of reinterpreting the path definition. "
After adding "ucache" instructions to my filter the speed improved by factor 10.
To illustrate the said the "ll" text from above looked as follows after the transformation:
%definition of the glyph "l" named "p0"
/p0
ucache
0.000 0.000 1.054 8.592 setbbox
0.000 8.592 moveto
0.000 0.000 lineto
1.054 0.000 lineto
1.054 8.592 lineto
0.000 8.592 lineto
closepath
} cvlit def
G
N
0.769 2.468 translate
%draw "l" at 0.769 2.468
p0 ufill
-0.769 -2.468 translate
3.649 2.468 translate
%draw "l" at 3.649 2.468
p0 ufill
-3.649 -2.468 translate
For ucached shapes there is a special compact representation so that the same can be written as follows:
/p0
0.000 0.000 1.054 8.592
0.000 8.592
0.000 0.000
1.054 0.000
1.054 8.592
0.000 8.592
} cvlit def
G
N
0.769 2.468 translate
p0 ufill
-0.769 -2.468 translate
3.649 2.468 translate
p0 ufill
-3.649 -2.468 translate
Interestingly the speed improvement remained the same on a Chinese report that had hardly any character reuse. Upon this observation I changed the filter to not use a dictionary but so simply instruct the interpreter to cache each glyph definition and the performance remained nearly the same.
The initial "ll" text from above looks as follows after this transformation:
N
%paint first "l" cached
0.76875 2.468 1.823 11.06
0.76875 11.06
0.76875 2.468
1.823 2.468
1.823 11.06
0.76875 11.06
} ufill
%paint second "l" cached
3.649 2.468 4.703 11.06
3.649 11.06
3.649 2.468
4.703 2.468
4.703 11.06
3.649 11.06
} ufill
Note that I didn't normalize the shapes.
Why does this improve the performance so vastly if the shape is drawn only once? For a while I thought perhaps that the interpreter would consider two paths which differ only by a translation as being the same but rereading the documentation and looking at the Chinese example in which nearly all characters are unique, disproves this. The relevant part of the documentation reads:
"Caching is based on the value of a user path object. That is, two user paths are considered the same for caching purposes if all of their corresponding elements are equal, even if the objects themselves are not.
A user path placed in the cache need not be explicitly retained in virtual memory. An equivalent user path appearing literally later in the program can take advantage of the cached information. Of course, if it is known that a given user path will be used many times, defining it explicitly in VM avoids creating it multiple times.
User path caching, like font caching, is effective across translations of the user coordinate system, but not across other transformations, such as scaling or rotation. In other words, multiple instances of a given user path painted at different places on the page will take advantage of the user path cache when the current transformation matrix has been altered only by translate. If the CTM has been altered by scale or rotate , the instances will be treated as if they were described by different user paths."
An explanation that would fit the findings
The rasterizer renders the page multiple time (perhaps in order to save memory and produce horizontal strips). On the first rendering the cache is filled and reused on the subsequent renderings thereby improving performance even if all cached items are used only once.
Based upon this theory I hoped that the strip height would grow if I added more memory to the printer but this was not the case on the two printers for which I had memory to test with. Even substantial changes to the available memory (e.g. going from 32 MB to 96 MB) had no impact whatsoever on the performance.
Summary
The issue is not related to the file size as the original requester suspected but very likely due to the uncached rendering. Caching of glyphs can be achieved by using the "ucache" instruction or perhaps by placing the glyphs in font dictionaries and using the "show" operator.
Although reported in 2003, time is apparently not healing this quick enough since printers in the 10,000$ class like the Sharp MX2310U still take a full minute to print 10 pages and a desktop printer may be blocked for over an hour for the same document.
We will now try to use the CUPS filter and leave the printers configured as Postscript printers. If there is interest I can post the single file source of a CUPS filter that performs the inline conversion described. Apart from libl it requires no additional libraries and written using flex it is reasonably lightweight and fast.
I would appreciate any opinion on whether or not the proposed workaround for bug 8023990 (https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8023990), namely having the system property "sun.awt.fontconfig" pointing to a working fontconfig.properties of a previously installed and working 1.6 version file, is safe.
Measures (Appendix)
"Terms and Conditions" report
Testing a single page "Terms and Conditions" report in "Arial" 8pt (I am aware that "Helvetica" is width compatible and nearly looks the same but in this particular case the line height was also relevant and as explained above, printer fonts are currently not working). The page contains 17000 characters of which some parts are bold and some italic. This is a real world example and to make things worse the requirement is to print the text on the backside of every page on a certain class of reports. I am aware that this is a bit extreme but I also felt that I couldn't dismiss it as being unreasonable.
File "Arial.ps" (7.5 MB Unmodified output of the JVM)
Printer
Printing time
Dell 2330dn 32MB/96MB
3:50 minutes
Lexmark X658de (55 ppm, aprox. 5,000$)
1:45 minutes
HP LaserJet 4240n 64 MB
1:12 minutes
Kyocera Taskalfa 300ci (30 PPM, aprox. 8,000$)
1 minute
HP Color LaserJet 4650 dn 128/384MB
51 seconds
Sharp MX 2310U 512MB (55ppm, aprox. 10,000$)
31 seconds
Arial_inline.ps (8 MB contains "ucache" without normalization and without dictionary)
Printer
Printing time
32MB/96MB
30seconds/30seconds (Improvement by factor 7.7)
Lexmark X658de (55 ppm, aprox. 5,000$)
15 seconds (Improvement by factor 7)
HP LaserJet 4240n 64 MB
47 seconds (Improvement by factor 1.5)
Kyocera Taskalfa 300ci (30 PPM, aprox. 8,000$)
20 seconds (Improvement by factor 5)
HP Color LaserJet 4650 dn 128/384MB
46 seconds (Improvement by factor 1.1)
Sharp MX 2310U 512MB (55ppm, aprox. 10,000$)
14 seconds (Improvement by factor 2)
Asian characters test
Testing 10 pages of Asian characters in the font "WenQuanYi Zen Hei" 12pt where each page contains 49 lines by 40 unique characters. The document contains the 30,000 characters between unicode 0x4e00 and 0x9fff. This is a nonsense stress test but it illustrates that the "ucache" speedup works even though no character is repeated in the report.
Asian.ps (52 MB Unmodified output of the JVM)
Printer
Printing time
Dell 2330dn 32MB/96MB
64 minutes
Lexmark X658de (55 ppm, aprox. 5,000$)
Not measured
HP LaserJet 4240n 64 MB
11 minutes
Kyocera Taskalfa 300ci (30 PPM, aprox. 8,000$)
Not measured
HP Color LaserJet 4650 dn 128/384MB
9:13 minutes
Sharp MX 2310U 512MB (55ppm, aprox. 10,000$)
4:08 minutes
Asian_inline.ps (54 MB contains "ucache" without normalization and without dictionary)
Printer
Printing time
32MB/96MB
5:30 minutes (Improvement by factor 11.6)
Lexmark X658de (55 ppm, aprox. 5,000$)
Not measured
HP LaserJet 4240n 64 MB
3:48 minutes (Improvement by factor 2.9)
Kyocera Taskalfa 300ci (30 PPM, aprox. 8,000$)
Not measured
HP Color LaserJet 4650 dn 128/384MB
2:46 minutes (Improvement by factor 3.4)
Sharp MX 2310U 512MB (55ppm, aprox. 10,000$)
48 seconds (Improvement by factor 5)

Hi Sven,
Will putting the boilerplate in the trailer section allow me to still have it appearing on the back page of the main report? This is where it needs to be as far as the printed report goes - it is duplexed.
Regards
Lanny

When i connect my iPhone, iTunes (v 11.4.0.18) stops working and produces an error

I use windows 8
When i connect my iphone 4 running on ios 7.1.2, itunes (v 11.4.0.18) stops working and produces the following error:
Problem Event Name:BEX
Application Name:iTunes.exe
Application Version:11.4.0.18
Application Timestamp:54045c47
Fault name:iTunes.dll
etc. etc. etc.
I tried each and everything.I even created a new user account on my pc and installed iTunes on it again, but still it failed.
Please help me with possible solutions.
Thank you in advance.

I use windows 8
When i connect my iphone 4 running on ios 7.1.2, itunes (v 11.4.0.18) stops working and produces the following error:
Problem Event Name:BEX
Application Name:iTunes.exe
Application Version:11.4.0.18
Application Timestamp:54045c47
Fault name:iTunes.dll
etc. etc. etc.
I tried each and everything.I even created a new user account on my pc and installed iTunes on it again, but still it failed.
Please help me with possible solutions.
Thank you in advance.

Producing :30 TV Commercials

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for