I'm wondering if anyone has ever raised the issue of some Ars Magica 5th Edition PDF rulebooks (bought at Warehouse 23) being slow to render (if that's the correct word). I can scroll through some PDF rulebooks rapidly on a tablet and the pages display instantly. For others, the screen will lock up for minutes before the page starts to show. File size doesn't seem to be a factor, as I've seen no correlation between file size and speed. Testing on different platforms shows the same issue, but as I progress from 1GB RAM to 16 GB RAM, the difference becomes only slightly apparent. The identified version of Adobe Acrobat for each file also doesn't give any pattern. I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this. The main culprits have been RoP: Faerie and RoP: Magic and other rulebooks with AGXXXX codes near these.
I've noticed this problem as well.
Have you tried reprinting the PDF as PDF? I did this a while ago with a contract which was inexplicably slow and it sped up and was smaller.
Those older PDFs might have some issues, yeah. Can you give me a list of the ones that seem problematic and I'll go take a look? In some cases, I won't be able to export them fresh from the layout files because those files don't actually exist any longer in an easily recovered way, but we could do some digging.
I tried various techniques to "optimize" Faeries to see if it would load faster, but I was never able to compress it. I even went through them and divided them up by chapter, hoping they would load faster. They ended up being slower for some reason.
I will get the list of them (there are about half-dozen or so) and post the list here before the weekend is through.
I appreciate the confirmation, suggestions, and interest in this problem. Thank you all!
I completed a qualitative analysis of "speed" across the different platforms I have here at the house. I used the following devices:
- Amazon Fire 6: Quad-Core 2x1.5/2x1.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM
- Amazon Fire 7: Dual-Core 1.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM
- HP "Blue" Laptop: 1.48 GHz, 4 GB RAM
- HP "Gold" Laptop: Dual-Core 2.10 GHz, 4 GB RAM
- HP Desktop: Dual-Core 3.00 GHz, 8 GB RAM
- Lenovo Laptop: 2.4 GHz, 16 GB RAM
I have the following PDFs:
AG0274 The Fallen Fane LARP
AG0287 Art & Academe
AG0288 Realms of Power: Magic
AG0289 Hedge Magic, Revised Edition
AG0290 Realms of Power: Faerie
AG0291 Tales of Mythic Europe
AG0292 Magi of Hermes
AG0295 The Sundered Eagle: The Theban Tribunal
AG0299 Hermetic Projects
AG0301 Grogs
AG0302 Against the Dark: The Transylvanian Tribunal
AG0303 Antagonists
AG0304 Tales of Power
AG0305 The Contested Isle: The Hibernian Tribunal
AG0306 Transforming Mythic Europe
AG0307 Hooks
AG0308 Faith & Flame
AG0309 Mythic Locations
AG0310 Between Sand and Sea: Mythic Africa
AG0311 Through the Aegis: Developed Covenants
AG0312 Thrice-Told Tales
AG0313 Lands of the Nile
AG0314 Dies Irae
First, all PDFs performed adequately on platforms #3, #4, #5, and #6. I noticed that some seemed to take longer to load pages than others, but given a normal rate of reading, skipping around between various chapters, and other usage, all were satisfactory.
The real problem is with the tablets. Now maybe I have slow tablets, but there is a marked difference between what I would characterize as "good" and "slow" when viewing these PDFs on the Amazon devices.
The following PDFs are Good, meaning that I can scroll down rapidly and the page will load, I have no problem exiting the PDF, there is no lock-up, etc.: Fallen Fane, Grogs, Against the Dark, and everything from Hooks (AG0307) to Dies Irae (AG314).
The remainder are Slow, meaning the PDF locks up after displaying the cover, it takes an excessive amount of time to display text pages, scrolling causes the PDF to lock-up, and when I try to exit it is very slow to return to my "library screen": all from Art & Academe (AG0287) to Hermetic Projects (AG0299) and all from Antagonists (AG0303) to Transforming Mythic Europe (AG0306).
Now, I understand that perfectly reasonable fixes are: "Read them on my laptop." or "Get a tablet with better RAM." Also, "page load" is limited to how fast I can turn the pages of my physical copies. I just wanted to reach out to the community to report what I was seeing and get confirmation that I'm not the only one having issues.
Thank you all for taking the time to read and respond!
An update on this issue.
I downloaded a different application to read PDFs on the tablets and the problematic books seem to be rendering at decent speeds. I had been using the Adobe Reader for Amazon Fire tablets, but I switched to an application called OfficeSuite and things are working better. I'm sure there are other applications out there as well that will fix the problem.
Thanks for following up!
We've been trying to get exported PDFs to optimize much better when we go back to them, but for the most part it sounds like we're doing OK. I appreciate you calling attention to this, though.