I hope that we will improve as we go along.
Thanks to all of you who submitted and helped out.
JB SKaggs
Starting any business is hard work. The fact that you delivered your first product on time says a lot about all those involved making it happen. And, if things like this were easy, everyone would be doing it. Good job.
Now the really hard part comes: Duplicating your success. We're rooting for you!
You are right about it being tough to produce one. The thing I learned was I need a macintosh. Windows (or at least the two computers I have) is / are not reliable enough to deal with huge media files without crashing constantly. Of course that requires big bucks I don't have, so Ill guess Ill have to keep facing the "Your program is unstable" error. I wanted to hunt down and kill the makers of my computer about the fifth time it crashed and corrupted my file.
First. Make sure you have a full copy of Acrobat. Don't rely on pontentially dodgy converters. They are often not up to snuff. Some are decent, though. Better to have full-functioning copy of Acrobat.
Second. The best way I've found to handle large documents to Adobe PDF is to "PRINT" them. That's right. Set "Acrobat Distiller" (or Acrobat) as a PRINTER. Then choose the settings that are appropriate. You will still have text that is selectable, and editable, by sending the file to Distiller (or maybe that's just Acrobat set as a printer -- one of the two, I'm sure of it). It will also reduce the file size of huge graphics.
Of course, you could always choose to optimize your graphics before putting them into whatever layout program your using.
Nonetheless, follow the above two steps and you'll have a fairly easy go at it. I've been using Acrobat for about 4 or 5 years now for numerous engineering jobs. I think the biggest file I dumped into Acrobat via Distiller was about 456MB before sending. Acrobat did its thing and the file was a mere 20MB afterward.
Hope this helps.
EDITS: A few typos corrected and an uncertainty revealed over Distiller. It's been a little while since I used Acrobat.
[This message has been edited by HSO (edited February 21, 2005).]
I should have come here before I sent you that email.
There is the revised copy up again for download at the contributors link.