Can't read certain PDFs on Kindle DXG?

[Amiieey]

Hey guys,

I know the DXG is not the greatest at PDFs and sometimes can't handle complex ones. They are good with some of my other PDFs, but I have put on some ~14 M sized ones that are approx. 300-400 pages long and are literally scanned pages of books- images, basically. There's no complex things like two columns or actual images/graphs, they're just PDFs from older books at Archive.org.

My problem is that I open the PDFs and the DXG usually opens it but it's a blank screen and at the bottom it says something like "some embed elements could not be displayed" and everything is blank. I tried using KPV but it crashes when opening these sorts of PDFs, and the DXG says that a problem occurred with the title and has to be closed.

Is it because these are too image heavy to be opened? If so, does anyone have any tips on what I should do to convert or get it to work on the Kindle? Thanks

[HarryT]

It's run out of memory; the DX has very little RAM compared with more modern devices. The overall size of the PDF file doesn't matter; it's the amount of memory required to display a single page that's the issue.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by Amiieey

...There's no complex things like two columns or actual images/graphs, they're just PDFs from older books at Archive.org.
...

If they are from Archive.org then they very well have an extremely complex structure even though they seem to only be scanned pages.

I've seen books from them that had several "layers" on each page. These stand out as they have a scan of a blank page, with its "aged" look, as a background with separate layers for the image and text scans, each with transparent backgrounds to reveal the "aged paper" page background. You can spot these as the same "flaws" in the background appear on multiple pages.

I've found that my old Kindle Keyboard fails to display these well, but if I open the PDF on a PC and print it using a PDF printer driver to create a PDF file the resulting "flattened" PDF displays properly on my Kindle.

[Dr. Drib]

I encounter this problem occasionally. I don't think it's a memory issue. This is a documented issue with complaints going back a few years.

Check out these older posts from Mobileread:


#1 JPD 09-29-2010, 02:10 AM
I transferred about 50 assorted pdfs from calibre to my kindle dx (no conversion, straight pdfs). When I try to open them on the kindle, every one gives a message, 'this pdf cannot be opened dut to embedded features not yet supported by kindle'. Many of these pdfs I had previously installed on the kindle by synching and dragging from my desktop, and they opened fine. After discovering calibre, I deleted them from the kindle, put them in calibre, and completed all their metadata. Since the metadata is the one obvious change, I suspect the problem may lie there, but can't imagine why. I apologize if this thread already exists; I did a search, and brief scan, without seeing anything similar.
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#2
Quote JPD
After discovering calibre, I deleted them from the kindle, put them in calibre, and completed all their metadata. Since the metadata is the one obvious change, I suspect the problem may lie there, but can't imagine why.
This is easy enough to test out. Go to Preferences - Plugins - Metadata Writer plugins and disable the PDF metadata writer plugin. Then delete and resend all of your troubled PDFs to your Kindle. This way there is no doubt calibre is not writing to the file.

Quote JPD
I apologize if this thread already exists; I did a search, and brief scan, without seeing anything similar.
You didn't find anything similar because no one has ever (at least in the last 20 months) stated anything along the lines of what you have concluded.

Let us know how it works the second time around.
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#3 JPD 09-29-2010, 06:27 PM
Thank you for the diagnostic. They do indeed open fine on my kindle dx now with the pdf metadata writer plugin disabled. The only thing at all 'exotic' I did with the metadata was to enter a lot of it in bulk, eg maybe 20 titles all had same author, tag and series, etc. Is there anything I should look for? Is there anyplace I can send one of the files so I can post a link to it for someone to examine?
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Some of the issues may be due to image compression schemes that Amazon's old firmware does not support or never implemented in the first place.