Moon Reader Pro sluggish PDF

[ittiandro]

I have installed Moon Reader Pro because most of my e-books are PDF. THey are all on the internal drive because I don't have an SD card.
For all my PDF books, the reading is a nightmare : sluggish, pages remain blank for too long before they fill up and I often get a message that the app is not responding and I am asked if I want to close it or wait. When I switch to an EPUB books everything is fine. What is the problem? I have also installed the PDF plugin for the Moon Reader, but it does nor make things better.
THe only choices are that I either give up reading the PDF books or I spend ages in converting them to EPUB, neither of which are very attractive,,
Can this problem be solved? How?
Thanks

Ittiandro

[Faterson]

As I see it, this issue has no solution. Like you said, converting PDF files to tolerably formatted EPUB files takes too much time. PDF files are fake e-books, but many books are only available (reliably, or at all) as PDF files, unfortunately.

Moon+ Reader Pro is my Android e-reader of choice, but I've never even attempted to use it as my PDF reader. You might give Mantano a try, but I wouldn't be too hopeful about that, either. PDF support in what are primarily EPUB readers often leaves a lot to be desired.

I use ezPDF Reader as my PDF reader on Android; it seems to be the best of the lot, and it's definitely a decent app. However, I find it lags in terms of overall quality and functionality behind GoodReader, the best PDF reader on iOS.

[mtsgsd]

I had the same trouble when I first started to convert my paperbacks to PDF, and I discovered that it was the size of the files that were causing the problem. Using Adobe to "optimize" the PDF file drastically reduced the size of the PDF and now MR+ has no trouble at all with the added bonus of less space being taken up.

Like an idiot I somehow lost the copy of Acrobat 10 that came with my scanner, so the last time I re-loaded my PC I had to do without that function. I found a freeware windows app called "Orpalis BDF Reducer" that will shrink them down to about 25% or so of the original size, which isn't as good as what Acrobat did, but good enough. Try that if you don't have a licensed version of Acrobat and see how it does.

BTW, I recently tried converting a PDF to Epub in Calibre just to see if there was any improvement. The resulting file was 5 times larger than the PDF, and MR+ couldn't display it correctly ie. not one page at a time.

[markom]

Originally Posted by mtsgsd

I had the same trouble when I first started to convert my paperbacks to PDF, and I discovered that it was the size of the files that were causing the problem. Using Adobe to "optimize" the PDF file drastically reduced the size of the PDF and now MR+ has no trouble at all with the added bonus of less space being taken up.

Like an idiot I somehow lost the copy of Acrobat 10 that came with my scanner, so the last time I re-loaded my PC I had to do without that function. I found a freeware windows app called "Orpalis BDF Reducer" that will shrink them down to about 25% or so of the original size, which isn't as good as what Acrobat did, but good enough. Try that if you don't have a licensed version of Acrobat and see how it does.

BTW, I recently tried converting a PDF to Epub in Calibre just to see if there was any improvement. The resulting file was 5 times larger than the PDF, and MR+ couldn't display it correctly ie. not one page at a time.

It is not really the size of pdf files that usually causes the problem, but the size of pdf page or compression method applied, because of poor memory and processor capabilities on many cheap tablets out there.

There is also no need for Adobe Acrobat to print out a pdf to your tablet size and resolution, because any virtual printer (e.g. using free Adobe Reader) will do the job and transform complex pdf compression and huge page size to simple pdf bitmap that matches your color tablet or b/w e-reader resolution.

I've mentioned free Adobe Reader because it has got a poster mode(same as tile mode in Acrobat), which is needed for printing out a bigger A4 size to landscape mode of 6" readers, so that it takes two or three screens per one A4 page.

It is also a good idea to crop the white margins beforehand using Briss or Pdfscissors, or even better use free k2pdfopt that can do that all (and a lot more) in one go, with a few mouse clicks.

[mtsgsd]

There seems to be many assumptions in that reply, but I didn't supply every detail for you either. The fact remains that my MR+ Pro works perfectly now that the PDF files have been reduced in size.

I am scanning paperbacks using a Fujitsu Scansnap s1500 at 300dpi and the page size is about 4.04x6.85 with small variances from book to book. Using a lower resolution affects the quality of the reduced version without gaining any appreciable reduction in file size which is why it may seem high. I'm reading these on a Samsung Galaxy S3, not a tablet. BTW the resolution is 306ppi on the phone, with a screen size of of 720x1280 or 2.35 X 4.18 inches.

I was kind of excited to read your reply as I hadn't tried using the readers to reduce the file via printing. Too fixated on the "Optimize" option from Adobe I guess. So I did some experimenting.

A typical scan is anywhere from say 15MB to an average of 50MB but can be higher. Your idea of using the print to file sounded interesting so I compressed a 31MB scan using every variation I could in the output to reduce the size. That optimizer I'm using now can get it down to 7.9MB. using Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader the size goes up instead of down. In fact the best result I was able to obtain was 71MB after sacrificing some quality. I had originally started out with K2pdfopt as it allows me to customize the output size, but this also results in a larger file than the original(but only slightly so. Incidentally there is no margin to remove from the scan I'm testing with. The printer used almost all available space on the physical page LOL.

If you have any wisdom to impart that could get me a better result than 25% of the original I'd love to hear it. I have about 1000 books that I'm converting.

Thanks!

[ittiandro]

Originally Posted by mtsgsd

I had the same trouble when I first started to convert my paperbacks to PDF, and I discovered that it was the size of the files that were causing the problem. Using Adobe to "optimize" the PDF file drastically reduced the size of the PDF and now MR+ has no trouble at all with the added bonus of less space being taken up.

Was it Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat? I'd like to try and reduce the size of the PDF files. Actually, it is not only Moon Reader I have problem with. I have tried other e-readers, as well, in my tablet, like Mantano, Aldiko, EZBook Reader, etc, but they all have problems opening my PDF books in the Android tablet.
I guess these apparent PDF books are scanned images and ALL these readers have trouble opening them. They only work when OCR converted, but the only OCR conversion software which works is the k2PDFOPT, even though I have a crashing issue with this software which I am trying to iron out with the developer. May be the problem is not with the software but with my input files or my computer . I don't know, but I'll find out.
I have tried ABBYY and Nitro. The 1st one is a very clever software, but unfortunatelyt it does not have a batch conversion option ( I have about 100 PDF books to convert!) and on top of this, it does not render the Greek text characters, only the Roman characters of the English text, even though there is a language setting allowing to choose other languages and characters, but it simply does not work with( ancient) Greek!, but I suppose it is great for any run of the mill English input.

Ittiandro

[mtsgsd]

Originally Posted by ittiandro

Was it Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat? I'd like to try and reduce the size of the PDF files. Actually, it is not only Moon Reader I have problem with. I have tried other e-readers, as well, in my tablet, like Mantano, Aldiko, EZBook Reader, etc, but they all have problems opening my PDF books in the Android tablet.
I guess these apparent PDF books are scanned images and ALL these readers have trouble opening them. They only work when OCR converted, but the only OCR conversion software which works is the k2PDFOPT....I have tried ABBYY and Nitro.
Ittiandro

I had a copy of Acrobat 10 that I got with my Scansnap, but somehow the disk got replaced, and when I re-built my PC I lost the use of it. That's why I use that other program to "optimize" the file as they all it. I have it much easier than you as I'm scanning books with simple english text, and although I do have ABBYY as well, it's crap for my purposes. So is K2PDFOPT, which uses Tesseract for the OCR. Even scans with perfect "normal" fonts do not get clean enough OCR output for me. I don't want to spend hours correcting 1000 book scans with an average of 400 pages. This means the file will be smaller for me, and less complex for a reader to digest. I don't know how much harder the embedded OCR is for the reader, but this could be the difference.

For me, PDF files in the 7MB or smaller range work well, but the original scans at 30MB and larger do not. If your files are in that small range and still don't work, I guess the OCR may be to blame. If they are in that larger group, maybe not. I also do scans in black and white BTW.

[markom]

There is fully functional 30-days-trial version of Adobe Acrobat XI Pro

https://www.acrobat.com/free-trial-download.html

ClearScan reduces pdf size considerably.

http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/2009/...rscan_is_smal/

[Barty]

On Android, I haven't found anything better than Mantano, at least with the PDFs I have -- mostly programming books. It's very smooth and fast, has margin cropping, night mode, pretty much all I need.

I should say I only read and don't do annotation, form filling, etc.

Ezpdf has way too many tiny icons. Seems like a glib objection, but I don't like the cluttered interface.