VDP Software

[DigiCorn]

CWS is what we use to produce the end result. We have a LARGE client, who is lazy amongst other things, and has literally 10s of thousands of images to use for projects and they are stored on some image server somewhere. The last job we had to enlist the help of Easy Catalog tech support to create a unique plug-in to grab the images from remote server to write the pdf, and it cost use about $2500 for a one-time license use. The files were enormous and took about 30-45 minutes for every 500 records, and we had to do something like 65,000 to do, and every postcard had 2 images and every image was unique.

I have used FusionPro before and I know I can impose and write a ppml on the fly that CWS can process in mere seconds (I used to do a special event train ticket job with 27,000 records so I know what I'm doing), but what I don't know is whether or not you can write a script in FP that will pull the images from a remote server like that.

[pspdfppdfxhd]

I used to run a set of train tickets for the Polar Express. 27,000+ unique tickets, each with a different picture, number, car assignment, seat number, day, date and time and you impose within FP using their imposer software based on how you cut and stack and you export the single file setup as a PPML (.zip). CWS processes it almost instantly.

That's what I mean about all this....you need to have CWS or similar rip to interact with FP, a basic driver rip won't handle PPML unless I am missing something here.

[DigiCorn]

I'm NOT worried about the RIP. What I am looking for an answer for is: does FP have the ability out of the box to call back unique images from a hosted web server off site, and if not, is this a module that can be added? Or... do the images need to be saved either locally or to an FP hosted server? We wouldn't be able to host the 100,000s+ images used for the jobs locally, so we previously used software that was special designed to download the images, write the pdfs, and then we had to go delete the images afterwards to free up space for the next segment. We broke the job up into lots of 1,000 2up (runs of 500) at a time to handle it.

[David]

Fusion Pro is pretty badass, and has a cost to go with.
My only knowledge of it was when we had it years ago. We used it for massive mail merge bs, no imagery just text.
 I would think what you are asking is do-able, might not be built into the "cheep" package, but I'm sure they can hook you up with a solution. Have you tried to contact them?

[Joe]

I'm NOT worried about the RIP. What I am looking for an answer for is: does FP have the ability out of the box to call back unique images from a hosted web server off site

What kind of off site web server is. If it something like an Amazon AWS they have utilities to access through the PC or Mac file system so on your Mac you can mount the AWS drive as a network drive. Might not be the fastest in the world depending on your internet connection. Other web servers like the one I host this site on also has a thing to allow me to mount the web server folders as a network share also. FP would just think they are network shares and it should work.