Printdrive trapping issues

[Farabomb]

I've had a recent issue that is driving se up the wall. I'm running Printdrive series 3 (old I know but so far it's been working without major issue) and for some reason the trapping software has gotten real, real picky. If I run the single pages through, no issues. Imposed pages are another story. Shut off trapping and everything is fine, except the pressmen hate me then. It's been getting worse as the months progress. Now jobs that would breeze through the RIP blow the damn thing up.

The bosses know we're behind on the software updates but as of right now the money is not there for the newest revision. They're considering a bandaid external trapping software or even a used printdrive RIP. Personally, I'd rather get it from AGFA direct so I can have a place to call when it all goes tits up but the powers that be enjoy making my life difficult. Any suggestions are welcome and I can provide whatever info is needed.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

You will need to post your settings.

[jason]

I'll go out on a limb here before getting more information.

Sounds like your running Agfa Apogee Series 3. All PrintDrive does is store your raster data before it gets sent to your Palladio or whatever you got.

In Series 3 the trapping could be controlled by the Job Ticket Editor or by Acrobat. My guess is you have gotten these two mixed up and have no idea which one is really controlling your trapping on any given job.

The whole thing sounds fixable. Series 3 was quite stable IMHO, I used it for quite a few years before upgrading to Apogee X 4.0.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

You got trap within images on? That will increase trap time exponentially.

[Farabomb]

Afaik trapping is done through the JTE and the PDF RIP. I'll watch the RIP and it'll get to a point in while trapping before it all goes to hell and flushes the job. I've never been trained on this system, we bought it second hand. I have a decent grasp on the printdrive I think. It's a recent problem thou. Files from customers that have never been an issue and now a huge headache.

Here's what I have: Prindrive series 3> AGFA PDF RIP> Printdrive Pilot> ECRM Dessertcat. Image@2400 175lpi AGFA balanced screening.  I honestly don't know what the trap settings are. We are using whatever the box came with. I'll take a look on monday and see what info I can get for you. The screen says in rip trapping clicked, app trap settings: ignore, trapping param: 002 center, pro color neutral density inkset: SWOP. It's been working fine for 3+ years but it seems to get really angry at anything output from newer versions of illy/indy/quack.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

Have you adjusted your PDF settings lately? Version is what I am implying. Series 3 probably won't like anything after v1.4. It might be puking them up because it doesn't like the version. A guess. It could also be a transparency thing. Try saving your PDFs in V1.3.

[Lukas]

Trapping is memmory and disk intensive if your harware is getting old you may have failiures here. The cheapest upgrade you can do is fresh disks. If that is too expensive, make sure you do disk optimise.
As design jobs are more complex today you will find that "new wine in old wine skinns" can burst your workflow.
If you're stuck with what you got, look at using trap zones, more work but it means you tel the rip what zones are important... i'ts how to stay alive if you have aggressive press men.

[Farabomb]

I distill all my PDFs from .ps. I have 2 standards I use, one for HUGE files that downsamples to 375 and one that does not compress at all. Everything saved to 1.3 because I've been told the RIP isn't a fan of anything above that.

Lukas, you got me thinking. Hardware should be fine. HP Proliant dual 3.06 xenons with 2g mem and 4 36g SCSI drives. I started looking at the drives and one was chock full of log files so I cleared them off and they're defraging as I type. Maybe I'll get lucky and that will fix the issue.

 

[jimking]

As stated earlier I always used the trap zones in the old Apogee 2 not X. And it made a big difference in speed! Also, Dump old jobs and temp files. Our box would overtime freeze because of thousands of temp files and 1 bit tifs.

[Farabomb]

I won't claim success just yet but after clearing the logs and defraging a job that would not RIP on friday went through smoothly. I'll have my fingers crossed all week.   :undecided:

[Lukas]

 KWL if you get a good week maybe you need to get disk keeper or something to defrag at regular schedule, like every friday.