Ghost information

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grafisk service
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Ghost information

Post by grafisk service »

HI!

I have extracted a page from a multipage pdf with a lot of pictures. That extracted page is only a few textlines. The size of it is 20 Mb because it has a lot of information from the parent file.
Question: How do I get rid of this unwanted information so the size of my extracted pdf will be as small as possible?

Thanks
Nils-Olof
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David.P
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Re: Ghost information

Post by David.P »

Hi,

have you tried to do a "Save As" of this file from within PDF-XChange Editor?

HtH
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David.P
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Will - Tracker Supp
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi guys,

The Save As likely won't help, I would recommend that you take a look at the Save As Optimized... feature:
https://help.pdf-xchange.com/pdfxe6 ... ns_ed.html

Thanks,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
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David.P
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Re: Ghost information

Post by David.P »

Hi Will & Nils-Olof,

I think that this is an issue that simply could be related to 'Incremental Save' and not primarily to optimizing page content, because Nils-Olof's single page document probably has only been saved with 'Incremental Save' so far. He should also make sure that "Always use Incremental Save" is not checked in the options:
Image

I just tried something similar and used a 20 MB PDF document, deleted all pages but one, and then saved that single page with the "Always use Incremental Save" setting. In this case, the file size was not reduced at all, whereas when I deactivated "Always use Incremental Save" and then saved document, file size of that page went down from 20 MB to a few dozen kilobytes.

Of course, the "Save As Optimized" feature can be used just as well to remove that excess nonvisible content.

Cheers
David
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hi David,

Even without Incremental save if you delete all the pages you do not want, and save the rest - the file may stay huge - because there are e.g. named destinations in it.
The "proper" way to extract only the needed content is to use the Document -> Extract pages feature. This way only the information needed for the pages being extracted will be recorded in the new file - and it will be with the smallest possible size.

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Stefan
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David.P
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Re: Ghost information

Post by David.P »

Hi Stefan,
Tracker Supp-Stefan wrote:Even without Incremental save if you delete all the pages you do not want, and save the rest - the file may stay huge - because there are e.g. named destinations in it.
I don't think so :) -- because also this way, you get huge file sizes only when "Incremental Save" is active. I just tried it with and without a named destination pointing to a previously existent, but then deleted location -- and file size was the same in both cases, i.e. with and without the named destination.
Tracker Supp-Stefan wrote:The "proper" way to extract only the needed content is to use the Document -> Extract pages feature. This way only the information needed fro the pages being extracted will be recorded in the new file - and it will be with the smallest possible size.
Yes, but this obviously did not work in Nils-Olof's case, since this seems to be exactly what he has done.

On the other hand, it still could be possible that there actually is hidden content on that very extract page somewhere. In this case, indeed only the Save As Optimized... feature as mentioned by Will would help.

However, let's wait until he comes back with additional information, or with a possible solution based on the information given in this thread.

Cheers
David
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hi David,

I was referring to an extreme case - a file with tens of thousands of named destinations - and someone that was deleting all the unwanted pages with a similar result as here - the number of pages is dramatically reduced - but the file size remains almost constant.

Also - I hope I am wrong and Nils-Olof is extracting the pages properly - but I've seen a lot of people removing excess pages and wording this as "extracting" the ones they need!

Indeed it is best for us to now wait for further feedback from Nils-Olof and see if any of the ideas shared here has helped in their case!

Regards,
Stefan
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David.P
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Re: Ghost information

Post by David.P »

Understood, Stefan!
:)
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

:)
nils-olof
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Re: Ghost information

Post by nils-olof »

Hi!

I found the solution when I updated to the latest version 6.322
Under Documents - Cut (or Crop) Pages - Remove outtaked.
The original file was, from where I extracted one page, was 20 Mb (300 pages). After I hade working with it it was 2,5 GByte. After Remove outtaked it was 46 Mb. And after Optimized to 400 dpi and no compression it was 20 Mb.

Thank you all for your help.

Cheers / Nils-Olof
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Will - Tracker Supp
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

No worries, glad to help! :D
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

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Will Travaglini
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wohlhut
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Re: Ghost information

Post by wohlhut »

I know this thread is a year old, but I am hoping someone can answer this. I am using PDF-Tools and I have a 3-user license. I deal with construction drawings. When a drawing gets released, it invariably gets revisions. These revisions come in as a separate PDF file consisting of one or more pages. Most original files are 60-100 pages and are typically 100-180 MB in size (they print to a plotter on 24"x36" paper). I use the PDF-Tools' "Split/Merge" tool to combine the revisions I receive and place the revised sheet/page in the document, then delete the original page. This way I have an up to date digital file of the construction drawings. This has worked flawlessly until today.

For whatever reason, when I merged a 7 MB file to a 110 MB file (remember, I delete a page to replace it with the most updated page, so the file should not get too much larger in size), I ended up with a 289 MB file. At first, I didn't realize it had grown so large, then I merged another revision and my file size went to 470 MB. I tried following the instructions here and cannot find anything relating to "Remove outtaked" in either PDF-Exchange Editor or PDF-Tools. I am using version 7.0 (Build 326.0) of PDF-Tools and PDF-Exchange Editor. My license is valid until August 19, 2019, on both products.

I tried to "Optimize" the file and it reduced it from 470 MB to 430 MB. But here is the real kicker... I thought it was possibly just a bad page, so I ran the Split tool to separate them in 69 separate files. Now EACH of the 69 files is approximately 360 MB. That is a total of 25 GB. Can anyone help?
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Wohlhut,

Thanks for the post - To really help in this situation, we'll need a copy of some samples files to follow your process. Given the size of the files in question, you won't be able to post them here or email them to us. Is there a DropBox or Google Drive account you can use to send them? You can share with willtravaglini.trackersoftware@gmail.com.

We won't need all, just the 7MB and 110MB file should be fine.

Cheers,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
wohlhut
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Re: Ghost information

Post by wohlhut »

Will,

I emailed you a Dropbox link to the 448 MB "revised" file and the original 110 MB file. If you can figure out why the revised file grew so large that would be fantastic. I also included a screenshot of the file directory showing the files that were extracted from the 448 MB, each showing that they are about 370 MB in size.

This took the computer a couple of hours to finally complete this process.

Thanks!
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Wohlhut,

Thanks for that - I've had to pass this to my colleagues as I'm having serious trouble with the file; it's causing massive spikes in CPU & RAM usage that are causing my PC to be unusable. Hopefully my colleagues have better luck!
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
wohlhut
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Re: Ghost information

Post by wohlhut »

I'm having serious trouble with the file; it's causing massive spikes in CPU & RAM usage that are causing my PC to be unusable.
Welcome to my world... I wish I knew what caused (or is causing) the problem.
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Wohlhut,

My issue is definitely not with our software, at least in so far as I can tell at this point - it occurs before the file is ever opened and previews/thumbnails are disabled, so our software isn't actually doing anything. The moment that I open the directory all hell breaks loose.
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
wohlhut
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Re: Ghost information

Post by wohlhut »

My issue is definitely not with our software, at least in so far as I can tell at this point - it occurs before the file is ever opened and previews/thumbnails are disabled, so our software isn't actually doing anything. The moment that I open the directory all hell breaks loose.
The 430 MB file (that is allegedly causing this issue) was created using PDF-Tools by merging two files that may or may not have been created using PDF-Tools. As I said earlier, the original files were small(er) and after merging, relocating, and replacing certain pages, something went wrong with PDF-Tools and it created ghost information that increased the size of the files. It may be a corrupt file, but it wasn't corrupt (at least I don't believe any were corrupt as they opened, printed, and saved without any issues before the merge) before it passed through the PDF-Tools merge/split tool.

As an additional note, the "Always Use Incremental Save" is NOT checked and has (to the best of my knowledge) never been checked.
Willy Van Nuffel
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

Did you already try to insert one of the isolated pages into a new PDF, or vice-versa to extract the page to a new PDF, via PDF-XChange Editor instead of using PDF-XChange PDF-Tools for this (given the fact that you have a license for both products) ?
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Paul - Tracker Supp
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Re: Ghost information

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

Hi Michael,

thanks for providing this. We had our lead developer look at the files and he is not sure what is going on. He needs more detail about the process you used to create these. He has asked if you can make a video screen recording of what you are doing.

Since we are dealing with large files you can put them on our fileshare service. See here for details: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowle ... ile-server

We are keen to get to the bottom of this and hope that with such a video capture we will understand better what is happening.

regards

Paul
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Paul O'Rorke
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