Pitcher Posted March 30, 2015 Posted March 30, 2015 I am working on animating a feature length video. It is slow as molasses. I decided to produce an illustrated script as an intermediary step. To do this, I put the text in a Microsoft Word document. I inserted the bmp's I created in A:M from cho files. There are about 210 pictures. I start out with nice big bmp's. They display well in full screen. Then these get compressed when I insert them into Word. They still display well in Word, but of course, are much smaller in the document. Then the entire document gets compressed when I make a pdf in Soda 5 Pro. My Word document is about 90 MB. My Soda pdf is about 17 MB. The pictures start out cear and end up blurry. I did the same thing, but first I made all the bmp's into png's. Same result. I tried tech support for Word and for Soda, but there was no help that worked. I know there must be a way to produce a document with pictures that are not blurry. Is there better software you could recommend or better procedures? Quote
nemyax Posted March 30, 2015 Posted March 30, 2015 Did you consider making a dynamic HTML page that would let you flip through your pictures sequentially? Quote
Pitcher Posted March 30, 2015 Author Posted March 30, 2015 Thanks. I'll look into that. I've designed web sites. I'm not sure if a dynamic HTML page is the same. I was hoping to find a way to make one document that would have text and pictures, rather than an HTML document that links to graphics in a separate folder. Quote
nemyax Posted March 30, 2015 Posted March 30, 2015 one document that would have text and pictures, rather than an HTML document that links to graphics in a separate folder You'll find the difference in memory consumption staggering =) Quote
Pitcher Posted March 30, 2015 Author Posted March 30, 2015 I'm sure you are right about the memory consumption, but there's a big world and many programs. I hope one can handle text and graphics well in some sort of magical way. Quote
nemyax Posted March 30, 2015 Posted March 30, 2015 What version of Word are you using? 2010 has pretty good built-in PDF export. And you should use PNG as the picture format. Quote
Pitcher Posted March 30, 2015 Author Posted March 30, 2015 I was using 2003. I heard that 2010 was better, but I wanted to hear from somebody here that it is really good enough. I don't want to buy something that doesn't work. I also was wondering if Adobe pdf creator (Acrobat?) has a setting that allows the pdf to be a little larger? Quote
nemyax Posted March 30, 2015 Posted March 30, 2015 Before you splash out, try LibreOffice Writer and its PDF export. It has image compression options and produces faithful results. Quote
Fuchur Posted March 30, 2015 Posted March 30, 2015 ... or openoffice... Word is not really made to produce high quality PDFs... you would use InDesign or Quark for that stuff like that... but that is a whole different story... Quote
Pitcher Posted March 30, 2015 Author Posted March 30, 2015 I will look into those options. Thanks for the input. Quote
Jason Simonds Posted March 30, 2015 Posted March 30, 2015 Hello, I'm saying this a a recommendation as myself not Hash, Inc. and can not support this software. But sometimes when opening older version of word files in OpenOffice can cause some formatting problems(I just had to deal with this on a project). Word does not always export all of your format settings, so if for some reason you changed setting that are not exported in the file OpenOffice will not get that data. But CutePdf installs as a printer for free it's like printing a pdf not 'exporting' it. So nothing is reading the file and then trying to render it. http://www.cutepdf.com Quote
Pitcher Posted March 31, 2015 Author Posted March 31, 2015 You guys know a lot more about this than I do (and, believe it or not, most of my friends regard me as a "tech guy"). I really appreciate your suggestions. Since LibreOffice was free, I downloaded that and tried it first, and guess what? It met my needs! I'm sure that if I used the higher cost software and devoted considerable time to learning all of the in's and out's of desktop publishing, I could probably produce something with finer design and greater beauty, but LibreOffice lets me put my graphics and text together quickly and easily without having all the little bubbles on the graphics. It's not absolutely perfect, but after producing pdf's about 20 or 30 times and seeing no improvement, I'm beside myself. Thanks, Journeyman!!!! If you want to take a look at what the illustrated script looks like, you can find it at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByP4k82JQ7IOd2R3VkVNZ0M0MnM/view?usp=allocation It has many imperfections, but for right now, it is the best I can do. Quote
Admin Rodney Posted March 31, 2015 Admin Posted March 31, 2015 I delayed posting this as an alternative because it's not a standard approach and the pdf file format was your focus. As an alternative, self contained file, you may want to investigate Tiddlywiki (www.tiddlywiki.com) While embedding images, audio etc. increases the filesize dramatically it can be done and... like any html file resources can be externally linked. For those that haven't checked it out in a few years it much improved and actively being developed. Worth checking out: http://tiddlywiki.com/#Features If Tiddlywiki looks a bit complex it's both simple and complex. Simple if you just want to enter your information... and complex if you want to dig deeply under the hood and customize it to meet specific looks or requirements. Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.