Thinking about printing out that huge PDF manual fle yourself? DON'T DO IT!

wvg wrote on 1/13/2002, 4:27 PM
OK, its a weekend. I got a color printer and a second computer. So I decided to print out the 363 page manual. Myself. Dumbest mistake I made all week! This is a partial rant but maybe it will save some from making the same mistakes I did. At least you will have been warned. :-)

Now before someone tells me... I KNOW you could burn the PDF file to a CD and take it to some quick print shop and cough up maybe $40-50 bucks. Being a cheapskate at heart, I said to myself; what the heck, I can do it.

Here's the problems I ran into. As I'm writing this itis is 4:08 Central Time. I started my "little" print project about 10:30 AM. This isn't what I planned for my weekend. I'm using a HP 722C color printer. Almost brand new, haven't printed more than a 100 pages with it till now.

My first problem is printing on both sides of the paper presents some interesting problems. Oh I've done it before, so was half expecting some of what happened.

I start out printing the first 30 even numbered pages. No problem, so I reverse order and put them back into the printer. Again no problem each page prints correctly. I say to myself, this isn't too bad and run the even pages through page 100. Looking good, I reverse sort again, and set the printer to print the odd pages on the reverse side. I go watch TV. Dumb. I check on the print job a little while later and see that it messed up. In my absense the printer must have picked up two sheets of paper at once. No big deal if you're printing only on one side, a total disaster if you priting on both sides the paper. So far about 30 pages ruining needing to be reprinted. Time out for dinner.

OK, I'll watch the printer. Sure enough about a dozen pages in it picks up two sheets again. I stop the printer, need to do a couple pages over. This pattern repeats so I now need to babysit the printer to avoid wasting paper and more importantly ink. No sooner I think that the print quality rapidly peters out.

Time out to run to Best Buy. $65 to get a black and color ink cartridge. Several more times the printer picks up two sheets of paper at once. I struggle through and now I'm up to page 300, "only" 63 more pages to go. Because several pages make heavy use of black graphics it bleeds through. So need to print those pages again and wait longer for them to dry.

This little exercise left me frustrated. Hours to print out a manual, still not finished, then I still got to bind it. Well if you attempt it, you have an idea what you're in for. Got to go, have to check this print job for about the tenth time. Grrrrr.




Comments

dsanders wrote on 1/13/2002, 8:11 PM
Do what the rest of us do - take it to work and print it out on the office printer! Just kidding. I don't mind not getting a manual if I'm able to buy the software as a download for a reduced price, but it really is poor customer relations to buy a "Boxed" version and find nothing except a CD inside the box.

As a second rant, if Sonic Foundry really intended us to print out the manual (or at least make it easy for us to do it) why didn't they format the pages as 8.5 by 11. Sure you can scale it but what you end up with is three hundred pages of large print instead of 200 hundred of normal sized print.
wvg wrote on 1/13/2002, 8:42 PM
Well, I finished. I did scale it to fit 8.5 x 11 and doing so the body it about 10-11 points as far as font size, so not that big really. I did print it in color because of all the illustrations.

Turns out to be exactly an inch thick and weights in at thirty ounces and that's printing on both sides of the paper.

Unfortunately with so many pages the chances of your printer picking up two sheets here and there is pretty high. So to avoid that you either need to baby-sit the printer or print very small batches of ten pages at a time or so to avoid ruining too many sheets if it happens.

In short I'm glad I took the time to do it, but it will be a long time before I try printing out that large a project on both sides of the paper again.
MKS wrote on 1/14/2002, 2:52 AM
Your printer sounds real bad. If you're talking about printing the VV3 .pdf manual, I did it using an Epson 870 and it was a piece of cake. Besides excellent print quality, the Epson 870's paper feeding is outstanding. NEVER has it fed 2 sheets. It ALWAYS feeds envelopes on the first try without skewing. The best paper feed mechanism on any printer I have ever owned.

As far as ink bleeding through, I test printed a couple of pages that have color graphics on both sides. On cheap 20lb paper, the ink kinda bled through just a tad but enough to be annoying. Using HP 24lb bright white paper is the winner. Beautiful color graphics with minimal bleed through.

Maybe cleaning your printer rollers might help with your 2 page paper feed problem. Use only water or an organic cleaner like 409 and then wipe with water. Do not use alcohol on rubber or plastic rollers.
Caruso wrote on 1/14/2002, 3:37 AM
I feel your pain. I don't think HP is really the strongest in the paper handling area, and agree second the comment that I've fared better with two Epsons than two HP's.

Identical HP-LJ3100 became almost useless due to muli-page feed problems. To their credit, HP designed and provided at no charge a new stick-on separation pad which seems to have corrected the problem (but I had to re-align all my templates). Two Epson ink jets have never presented a feed problem . . . but I believe I'd burn through that $40-$50 pretty quickly if I tried to print a 365-page manual on either of the inkjets - between the paper and the ink cartridges.

Well, at least you've got your manual, so, happy reading. Thanks for sharing.

Caruso
Control_Z wrote on 1/15/2002, 7:58 AM
http://www.fineprint.com/software/fineprint/standard/index.html

Not free, but well worth the price if you do a lot of printing. I got the manual on to about 30 sheets which is small enough to hold together with a binder clip.
wvg wrote on 1/15/2002, 8:15 AM
Aren't you defeating the whole purpose of printing out the manual if you reduce it to such a small size you can fit a 363 page manual down to 30 pages?
PipelineAudio wrote on 1/15/2002, 11:32 AM
There needs to be a comedy page on this forum and i HIGHLY reccomend this post goes in it. You guys are the best!
I learned my lesson once, when I tried to print out the (il)Logic Audio Platinum manual :)
kkolbo wrote on 1/15/2002, 12:39 PM
I printed mine with my Deskjet 970 and I had no problmes. It double sided automatically and all I had to do was come back and load a second helping of paper to it.

Printing it took about a 1/4 of an ink cartridge and of course about 150+ pages of paper. Still cheaper than Kinkos. I used three hole paper so it fit nicely in an 1 1/2 inch binder.

I am sorry that you had so much trouble. That is why I bought a printer with two sided feeder. I saw that companies were spending the money to print manuals any more and I need a copy of it on the desk beside me when I work.

For those who have not read the manual, may I suggest reading it cover to cover. Most questions I see on this forum are covered in it and it is writen so that it is not a bad read. Dry but easy reading. There are a number of techniques and features that you can put to use once you get through the manual. I have quite a bit of experience with traditional editing and NLE's and I still found nice keystrokes and tips in the manual.

Thanks SF for a well writen manual. Lord knows I have read tons of bad ones. A printed version would be nice with the Boxed version of the program, but since I was a downloader I expected the printing process.

Keith
Control_Z wrote on 1/15/2002, 4:56 PM
Not at all. When you first get the program you want to take the manual to bed with you a few nights and read it from start to finish, but after that a paper manual is pretty much useless.

At least for me anyway; I haven't touched mine in a month. If the online help doesn't answer my question, then I have the .pdf in the program directory with a shortcut to it handy. Searching the .pdf is usually MUCH quicker than trying to find a specific term on paper.
wvg wrote on 1/15/2002, 6:01 PM
Maybe I'm old school, but nothing beats a hefty well written manual for quickly learning what an application can do.

You're right when you're actually using the application the on line help is probably as good or better but I like to curl up in my favorite chair and actually study manuals BEFORE I even touch the application for any serious work.

While Video Factory is "easy" to use, it is both a powerful and complex product. In my opinion you miss much of the finer features if you learn as you go, meaning learn the features only when you need to do a certain task. I much prefer to at lease have a general understanding of what it is capable of bouncing around in the back of my mind as I use it. It really depends on the application. Something simple like a anti-virus program, who needs a manual. However something along the lines of Poser, Photoshop, Corel Draw or Dreamweaver you really need to dig deep to get the most out of what are expensive and complex applicatons.