Using Adobe CQ5 as a repository for Acrobat Shared Reviews

Posted on November 28, 2011 by James Lockman | Comments (0)

Acrobat has a great feature called Shared Reviews, which allows an Acrobat Pro user to send a PDF to one or more people for their comments while allowing each of the reviewers to see all of the comments that had been made by all of the other reviewers. While the default method in Acrobat 9 and X is to use Acrobat.com as the repository, it is possible to use another server, such as Adobe CQ5, as the repository.

In a shared review, Acrobat needs two things: a PDF that has been prepared to receive comments and share them with other reviewers, and a network location that all of the reviewers can access for storing the comments. In a Shared Review, the comments are stored in a comment repository that is disconnected from the PDF itself. Acrobat uses this methodology so that it can always check with the repository to determine whether there are new comments that have been added to the PDF while you were away from it. It is very important that the repository be in a network location that is accessible to everyone, and that means using a WebDAV server. Why WebDAV? WebDAV shares use a path that looks the same on all operating systems, which is not the case for a SMB, AFP, or other operating system specific file system protocols. In addition, it is not necessary to mount the remote volume in order to communicate with it, since WebDAV has a number of file system access features that can be used through standard web calls. Acrobat knows this, so it does not need to mount the repository in order to use it for shared reviews.

To begin, we need to create a folder in CQ5 that will act as the repository for reviews. It is important that this repository be somewhat obfuscated to the casual user, so it is good to put it inside of a universal access folder that sits inside of an admin access folder. For instance, if I made a top level folder in the DAM called acrobat_reviews and inside of that another folder called repository, I would set the permissions on acrobat_reviews so that only the administrators can see it, and I would set the permissions on the repository folder so that everyone can read and write. You can also create a folder elsewhere in the repository that’s not in /var/dam. This is handy because it prevents Adobe Drive users from seeing the repository at all when they mount CQ DAM through Adobe Drive. Of course, you will want to consult your CQ system administrator to ensure that your repository location and permissions abide by your corporate policies.

Create a new folder in CRXDE LiteLet’s create a folder outside of CQ DAM and use it as our repository for Acrobat shared reviews. You will need a CQ5 Author instance to which you have administrative access and Acrobat X or a version of Acrobat that supports shared reviews. First, open up CRXDE Lite. You can create a folder other ways, but using CRXDE Lite is quick and only requires a web browser.

Navigate to the root of your CQ system, right-click on the root, and choose Create>Create Folder.

Name that folder acrobat_reviews. Right click on “acrobat_reviews” and choose Create>Create Folder again, and then name this new folder “repository”. The path bar should now show /acrobat_reviews/repository.

You’re not done yet, though, because the changes to the repository haven’t been written. You must click the “Save All” button to save the repository changes.

Now, let’s set permissions for the folders. Recall that we want to forbid access to the acrobat_reviews folder but allow access to the repository folder. In this example, we will use the user known as anonymous. You might want to use your LDAP or Active Directory groups to govern access, for instance, assuming that you have connected your LDAP or Active Directory system to your CQ instance. To set permissions, we need to use the CQ User Manager, otherwise known as CQ Security. Return to your CQ author instance landing page and click the User Manger. Double click the Anonymous user and click the Permissions tab.

Click the plus sign to the left of acrobat_reviews to show its subfolders. Leave the permissions on the acrobat reviews alone, and set the permissions on the repository to Read, Modify, Create and Delete as shown.

Click the Save link above the Path column heading to save the permission changes.

Now, we’re ready to use CQ as a repository for our Acrobat X Shared reviews.

In Acrobat X, open a PDF you want to send for Shared Review and click the Comment button to open the Comment Pane. Click the Send for Shared Review button, and then choose “Automatically collect comments on my own internal server” and click Next.

Choose the Web Server folder option. Enter the full URL to your repository. In my example, my repository is operating on my laptop and is running on port 4502. The URL to the repository is therefore http://localhost:4502/acrobat_reviews/repository. You will need to know your server URL and active port to the author instance in order to enter your own information, though. Click Next and Acrobat will prompt you for your credentials to access the repository. I used the Anonymous user, so I enter anonymous (lower case “a”) for the user and leave the password blank. If you click Save this Information, then the userid and password will be saved in Acrobat’s keychain. Each user who accesses the review will have to enter their own credentials. For groups, therefore, it makes sense to use groups to control access to the folder and therefore provide at least userid and password access to the reviews. Acrobat will create and delete a test file on the server, after which it will prompt you to choose how to send the review notification to reviewers.

You can choose to send the file with your default email application or send it later. If you are on a Mac, Acrobat looks for Microsoft Entourage, so if you aren’t using Entourage, then you might have trouble sending email from Acrobat on your Mac. In that case, save the file to attach to email later. On Windows, Acrobat supports more email clients. In any case, test to ensure that Acrobat supports your email client. If you decide to allow Acrobat to create the email, there are two options. You can choose to send the PDF as an attachment or as a link in the email message. Pick one, click Next, and then enter a name for your Server Profile. This will allow you to reuse these settings when you start Shared Reviews later.

Once you send the file to someone for review, they will need to be able to access the server, so be sure that the server URL is accessible to all of the reviewers. When a reviewer opens the PDF, they will login to the server, add comments, and then post them to the repository for other reviewers to see.

Because of its built-in WebDAV and easy to configure security, CQ5 is a great technology for Shared Review and Forms Data Collection workflows.

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Form Field Flattening in Acrobat X

Posted on October 8, 2011 by James Lockman | Comments (16)

While at Adobe MAX last week, I was asked how a user could flatten form fields with Acrobat X. Flattening form fields means removing the form fields themselves and placing the data onto the PDF as regular items. This is a common request for folks who want to “lock down” a form without using password protection.

A person who overheard the request chimed in with “just print it to a new PDF!” While correct, printing to PDF to flatten form fields is not optimal. If there are any transparent art elements in the PDF, for instance, they will be replaced with non-transparent “flattened” artwork. Any interactive content will also be removed and replaced with poster frames, if available. What, then, are we to do if we want to keep our PDF just like it was, but without any form fields?

Acrobat Pro can automatically preflight PDF documents using a robust and configurable preflighting engine. In addition, since Acrobat 8, it can also apply what are known as fixups to PDFs in addition to preflighting. Preflight profiles in Acrobat often contain only fixups, and we’ll use one of these fixups now.

With a PDF open, open the Tools pane and open the Action Wizard panel. Next, we need to create a new Action. Click the Create New Action button to open the Create New Action dialog.

 

The Action Wizard allows you to schedule a series of steps from a pre-determined pool of steps on one or more PDFs. All of these steps get bundled into an Action, which you can start by clicking the Action’s name in the Action Wizard panel. We’ll name our new Action later. First, we need to determine on what the Action will act. By default, Acrobat will start with A File Open in Acrobat. This will use the currently open file as the target for the Actions that are about to take place. You can also choose other sources, such as a file or folder to which you would browse, a scanner, or even let the user decide at the start. I’ll keep the default setting, since I want to be able to flatten form fields in a PDF that I am completing.

The Action Wizard allows you to provide instructions to users as well, and it’s a good idea to let the user know what’s going to happen. Click Add Instruction Step to add an instruction step. Enter a title for this step and also the text that will show in the dialog. I included the following: “This Action will flatten form fields in the PDf that’s open in Acrobat. It will not flatten form fields in an XFA (LiveCycle) PDF. When complete, it will save a new PDF with the word flattened inserted before the .pdf extension” Click Save to close the dialog.

Having given our user instructions, we can now choose the sequence of events. For this Action, we want to execute a Preflight profile. Acrobat X comes with a wide assortment of Preflight profiles, some of which contain only fixups. The one we want is called Flatten Form Data. To choose a Preflight Profile, open the More Tools panel and then click Preflight, which is at the top of the list. A Preflight step will now appear in the list under Action Start. To configure which Preflight Profile will be executed, click the Options button in the Preflight step. Having chosen the Flatten Form Data Preflight Profile, click Safe to save the step.

The last thing we need to do is to configure how the flattened PDF will be saved. I want the flattened PDF to go in the same folder as the original PDF, but with a new name to indicate that it has been flattened. To the right of Save To:, click the menu and choose Same Folder Selected at Start. Then, click the Options button to open the Output Options dialog. Choose Add to original file names: and enter “_flattened” into the Insert After field. Ensure that the output format is set to Save File(s) As Adobe PDF, and then click OK to close the dialog. You can choose to Overwrite existing files if you wish; it will not affect the original form.

Having configured the Action, it’s time to save so that we can use it. Click Save, and enter a name for the Action. I called mine “Flatten Form Fields” and entered the text from our alert dialog as the description. Click Save to save the Action, which will make it available in your Action Wizard panel.

To use the Action, open a PDF with Acrobat form fields that contain data. In the Action Wizard panel, click the name of your new Action. You will be reminded of what’s about to happen, and then you can click Next to proceed. You can choose not to show this Actions dialog again. Next, Acrobat will pop up our custom alert, and when you click Next, Acrobat will flatten the form data and save the new PDF. This new PDF will have all form data flattened onto page content and all fields will be removed. This is a great example of how Actions in Acrobat X can help get complex or obscure jobs done quickly and easily.

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Adobe DPS course available at Lynda.com

Posted on July 27, 2011 by James Lockman | Comments (0)
There is a new course available at lynda.com to help users get started with Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite.
with: James Lockman
Course Description:
Up and Running with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite shows designers how to create interactive publications for tablet devices using Adobe InDesign and the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Introducing this emerging publishing platform, author James Lockman discusses the DPS workflow, comparing it with existing EPUB and print workflows, and highlights key layout and design considerations when designing for DPS. The course explains how to incorporate hyperlinks, slideshows, panoramas, audio and video, and pan and zoom capabilities as a means of adding value to a publication. Lastly, the course sheds light on compiling interactive folios and testing and publishing finished projects. Exercise files accompany the course.
Topics Include:
  • Determining your digital publishing market
  • Designing for an interactive publication
  • Creating buttons
  • Setting up image sequences
  • Building the panorama viewer
  • Configuring audio and setting video playback options
  • Creating a web viewer portal
  • Structuring articles into folios using the Folio Builder
  • Testing a folio locally
  • Publishing folios
  • Building viewers for iPad and Android
Duration:
2.68 Hours
Here’s a sample:
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Video encoding for Adobe Connect with Mobile in mind

Posted on June 17, 2011 by James Lockman | Comments (4)

Recently, I was asked to present to a group of people via Adobe Connect, but I was not available to present live. I thought I would do a screen recording and then post it to my Connect room. While I could have done it all in one shot by using Adobe Captivate Full Motion Recording (FMR) mode and then letting Captivate upload the recording directly to my Connect room, I wanted to learn how to use a pre-recorded video in Connect.

I used ScreenFlow to record my presentation. I did this because it let me capture my screen and my built-in web cam at the same time, and then edit the recording very quickly without encoding. Encoding happens after I edit the recording, which can be a time saver when I want the job done really fast. If I want more robust editing, I of course send the unedited encoded recording over to Premiere and edit it there. For most of what I do, though, ScreenFlow does a great job when I don’t want to use Captivate. Regardless, from here on out, I assume that there is some video that I want to use in Connect.

Connect can only display two video file formats: FLV and F4V. These are the two Flash video formats, and they use the On2 VP6 and H.264 encodings, respectively. Since our objective here is to get the video to play on Adobe Connect Mobile (browse for it in iTunes, Android Marketplace and BlackBerry AppWorld), let’s focus on FLV, since I know it works.

When encoding for mobile, you need to think of how your client will connect to the Connect server. It might be through a 3G connection, which isn’t lightning fast, and often will be less than 1.4 megabits per second, depending on where you are. Here in NY City, for instance, the connections are often as slow as 500 mbits per second. You must therefore encode your video with the slowest connection in mind. We’ll get to this when we look at bandwidth.

Remember that I already have a recording that I saved from my screen capture software. In my case, I exported it from ScreenFlow using their lossless setting. I did not use their Export to Flash option, as it makes an F4V file using the H.264 encoding method.

Export Settings from ScreenFlow

Export Settings from ScreenFlow

However you capture your video, you want the highest quality file you can get, since we’re going to compress hit pretty hard in the Media Encoder.

Now that we have our file, let’s send it to the Adobe Media Encoder (AME). Adobe Media Encoder comes with Acrobat Pro and with the Creative Suites. It also ships with other point products such as Flash and Flash Builder. You will need Media Encoder in order to encode the video for Connect. I am using Media Encoder CS5.5, which is different from Media Encoder CS5. If you would like a deeper dive into how to use AME, visit this page on the Adobe Developer Connection.

To use AME, launch it and then drag your video into the queue at the top of the screen. Once there, you can adjust the encoding settings by clicking the hyperlink under Format and choose FLV.

You will see many options here including H.264 and F4V. This may seem confusing, since codec is not the same as file format. An F4V and MOV file may both be encoded using H.264 codec, for instance. Remember, we need On2 VP6 for our video, so choose FLV and that will automatically choose the On2 VP6 codec.

Adobe Media Encoder settings for Adobe Connect

Adobe Media Encoder settings for Adobe Connect

Here are some tips to help make the video successful.

  • Choose CBR, which means Constant Bit Rate.
  • Set the bit rate to anticipate your slowest connections. I set mine at 800 kbps, but you can adjust for your bandwidth expectations. To be safe, assume slower connections and you won’t have stuttering due to latency issues.
  • Two pass encoding will take longer but the result will be better.
  • Reduce the frame rate to an even factor of your initial frame rate. My original video had a frame rate of 30 fps. I reduced it to 10. If you have 24 fps, you might want to reduce it to 12 or 8.
  • Reduce the frame size to match your clients. In a perfect world, I would have reduced my screen resolution to something like 1280 x 800 for the recording, but I can’t count on that all the time. Connect will scale the video to fit your client’s frame, but it’s best to be close to the size of the player window.

I have attached a copy of my Media Encoder Preset file. To load it, download the file from my Acrobat.com workspace by clicking the link. Then, when you have opened the encoding settings dialog, click the little folder icon next to the  settings drop down menu and browse to Connect.epr, which is the file you downloaded from Acrobat.com.

Import AME Settings for Connect

Import AME Settings for Connect

Once you have loaded the setting, you can adjust the settings if needed. Once you’ve finished your tweaking, you can save the preset for use later by clicking the little floppy disk icon to the right of the Preset drop down menu. If you want to share your preset with others, then Option-click (Mac) or Alt-click (Windows) the floppy disk icon and you will be able to save the preset to wherever you choose.

Once you have applied your settings, then you can close the dialog and click the “Play” button in the upper right hand corner of the AME window. This will force the encoder to begin encoding your video for Connect. Depending on length, your encoding time will vary. Mine was 20 minutes of HD video and it took about a half hour to encode on my laptop with the settings in this post.

Once encoded, you can share it from any share pod in the connect room by either uploading it into your Content area of your Connect account or by browsing for the video from a Share pod in the Connect room. Click the triangle next to Share My Screen in any Share pod and choose Share Document from the dropdown menu. If you have put it into the Content area of your Connect account, it will be available in My Content. If you want to share it from your computer, then choose Browse My Computer… and browse for the video. After it uploads, you will be able to play it when you need it in your presentation. More importantly, both your desktop and your mobile viewers will be able to enjoy your video.

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Fonts and Where Can I Use Them?

Posted on June 6, 2011 by James Lockman | Comments (1)

I came across a question recently in a developer forum, and I felt it warranted broader exposure.

“What is the legality of embedding fonts in an app for distribution?”

This is a thorny issue. Not all fonts are licensed for use in all places. Arial specifically has a checkered past, as outlined in its Wikipedia page. Nevertheless, it is instructive to look at paragraph 12 of Monotype’s current End User License Agreement (EULA):

12.  You may electronically distribute Font Software embedded in a “Personal or Internal Business Use” document (that is, a document other than a “Commercial Product” as defined herein) only when the Font Software embedded in such document (i) is in a static graphic image (for example, a “gif”) or an embedded electronic document, and (ii) is distributed in a secure format that permits only the viewing and printing (and not the editing, altering, enhancing, or modifying) of such static graphic image or embedded document. You may not embed Font Software in a Commercial Product without a separate written license from MI, and you may not embed Font Software in an electronic document or data file for any reason other than your own Personal or Internal Business Use.

The emphasis in the above paragraph is mine. With that kind of license, how should a developer proceed?

It turns out that Adobe sells a package called the Font Folio, which includes fonts both wholly owned by Adobe and also licensed from other foundries, including Monotype, who owns Arial. The licensing for those non-Adobe fonts in the Font Folio varies from typeface to typeface, and often includes different terms for print vs web vs video vs app inclusion. Those terms may also forbid alteration of the font in any way. These EULAs are written by the foundry and not by Adobe, and Adobe has no control over what the terms of a specific EULA will be for a licensed font. Arial has one of those licenses, by the way. You can read Adobe’s font EULAs here.

Adobe has a subset of the Font Folio called the Font Folio Select (FFS). It consists of the fonts that are wholly owned by Adobe and have the broadest license terms of any fonts in terms of how they can be used. Any font in the FFS can be used in print, in an app, in a SWF online, in video and more. They can also be modified, but there are some specific licensing considerations around modifications that you’ll want to investigate. The short of it is that if you modify a glyph in a font and then deploy that modified font in your company, you are no longer permitted to use the ORIGINAL font. If you want the original version AND the modified version at the same time, then you need to purchase another license for the original.

FFS is available to customers who purchase through licensing programs. It is not available as a boxed product through traditional retail outlets. Customers should contact their preferred reseller to learn more.

So, can you use Arial in your app? That depends on how you acquired Arial and the license that was in force when you got it. It is best in this case to NOT embed Arial in your app, but to allow the operating system to supply the resource. Every modern computer on the planet started life with Arial installed, so it’s a pretty safe bet that it resides on your customer’s computer. For other fonts, look closely at the EULA that came with that font. You may find that there is no limitation and you may find that there are explicit limitations. If you have some old fonts lying around, those EULAs tended to be pretty lenient until recently, because there was no idea of Rich Internet App or mobile app when they were struck. Those EULAs remain in force, so you might have some hidden gold in those old floppies out in your barn.

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