Zero sized media boxes? Inconsistent results.

trumpetinc · Post by **trumpetinc** » Mon Aug 07 2006

We have one user who has about one out of ever 4 or 5 print jobs they initiate wind up with a PDF file that has very tiny pages (in Adobe, the zoom flips to 64000%). The other print jobs (same source document) come out just fine.

The file sizes of the good and bad versions of a given print job are similar (~250KB).

I checked the content of the good and bad PDF files, and I noticed that the MediaBox entry for the bad files is:

/MediaBox [0 0 0.0 0.0]

where the entry for the goof files is:

/MediaBox [0 0 612.0 792.0]

This makes me think that all of the content is there, but the 0 sized media box causes Acrobat to not render it.

Any ideas on why this is happening, or suggestions of where to look?

Thanks,

- K

Post by **Jose** » Tue Aug 08 2006

Hello,

This situation will occur typically under two circumstances.

1- The PDF Converter is unable to create the PDF document in the directory set in the DefaultFileName(). I suggest you verify the user's permissions to this directory

2- No output is actually being sent to the PDF COnverter and the printer is generating a blank or empty PDF file.

Hope this helps?

trumpetinc · Post by **trumpetinc** » Tue Aug 08 2006

User has full rights to the output directory (in fact, the file gets generated, and has sufficient size to indicate that it contains all content). A cursory look shows that the file has the same content streams as when the job doesn't produce the weird mediabox pages.

The only issue as far as I can tell with the resultant PDF files is that the media box is bogus... What's incredibly odd is that the problem happens from multiple apps, but doesn't happen consistently (sometimes it works fine, other times it comes up with the invalid media box).

I suspect that if I went into the file and adjusted the media box, and changed the offsets in the xref table that the file would display properly...

By my thinking, if the print job wasn't sending any valid data, then the resultant PDF shouldn't contain streams (and it most definitely does contain streams)...

Any other ideas?

- K

Jose wrote:Hello,

This situation will occur typically under two circumstances.

1- The PDF Converter is unable to create the PDF document in the directory set in the DefaultFileName(). I suggest you verify the user's permissions to this directory

2- No output is actually being sent to the PDF COnverter and the printer is generating a blank or empty PDF file.

Hope this helps?

Joan · Post by **Joan** » Tue Aug 08 2006

Hello,

Did you try to use the latest version 2.51-b of the PDF Converter?

trumpetinc · Post by **trumpetinc** » Tue Aug 08 2006

Not yet - but I didn't see anything about invalid media boxes in the bug fix list - was there an issue that was fixed related to this?

thanks,

- Kevin

Joan wrote:Hello,

Did you try to use the latest version 2.51-b of the PDF Converter?

Joan · Post by **Joan** » Wed Aug 09 2006

There was an issue related to 0 bytes pdf files that was fixed and an issue related to files with very small page hight and page width getting generated.

trumpetinc · Post by **trumpetinc** » Wed Aug 09 2006

Thanks. I didn't see that in the bug fix list, but we'll go ahead and give it a spin to see if the issue resolves itself.

Joan wrote:There was an issue related to 0 bytes pdf files that was fixed and an issue related to files with very small page hight and page width getting generated.

trumpetinc · Post by **trumpetinc** » Wed Aug 09 2006

OK - we tested with 2.51b, and the problem still happens.

Interestingly, once the issue starts, it continues until we actually close the report and re-create it.

Is there anything we can do to get log information about the page sizes that the converter is receiving during the print job? It would be nice to know if the converter is receiving the correct information, and doing something wrong - or if the source application is sending invalid page size info or something else that is causing the converter to generate media box entries with zero size.

I strongly suspect it is the converter (not the source app) - we have two different source apps that are giving us the same results.

Please let me know what the next steps are!

Cheers,

- K

Joan · Post by **Joan** » Wed Aug 09 2006

Hello,

The next step is to contact support@amyuni.com and submit a technical support request. Our engineers will look at this.

Thanks.

trumpetinc · Post by **trumpetinc** » Wed Aug 09 2006

thanks, Joan. for reference, we finally figured out the trigger on this (why it was happening some times and not others), and can get it to fail consistently.

If the user prints the report to their HP 2250 color printer first, then the Amyuni print job fails from that point forward until the report is closed and re-generated.

If the user prints to the Amyuni driver first, it works fine.

Still not sure what the root issue is, but I'd be willing to bet that the page size being sent to the converter is invalid, as a result of something the HP drivers are doing.

- K

Joan wrote:Hello,

The next step is to contact support@amyuni.com and submit a technical support request. Our engineers will look at this.

Thanks.