Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

hi, i am trying evaluation version of qimage and i am trying to set the paper size via the printer driver, the size of the roll is 36" wide and the roll length is 45.7 meters, i have a design jet 5500 42" printer  and windows 10 64 so i set the custom paper size to 36" wide and the length to 190" as i print banners and mainly in quantities of 2 each, for some reason it prints staggered so it will print about 3 inches at the top (full length which is good) then seems to stagger the rest , i will attach an image, also when i use this setting it seems to just run to the end of the roll which i stopped the process in time lol, any ideas what setting i am doing wrong as i am seriously thinking of purchasing this software, also if i add multiple images (same size of width of media) will it cut the paper at the end of each banner like it does on the printer web access?
thanks in advance.
Terry.

When you are setting your page size, if you set the page size to 36" (wide) in the driver x 190" (length), then your page size is 36x190 and the driver won't stop ejecting paper and won't cut the paper until the 190" length that you specified since you've identified that as the length of a "page".  You should set the length to only what you need for the job.  If you were using any wide format printer other than an HP printer, Qimage could automatically set the roll length for you and you'd never have to worry about the length... but honestly, HP drivers are very buggy and their drivers often don't conform to Windows standards: so you can't do things like specify length via software (it has to be done/saved in the driver so Qimage can't control roll length).  Anyway, just set your paper length to what you need as I suspect you don't need a 190" length.

The missing pieces in your print are also caused by an inability of the HP driver to accept large amounts of data while certain features in the driver are active.  Make sure there are no "automatic" settings enabled in the driver like automatic contrast or picture adjustments, etc. and take a look at the section of this article that talks about partial prints, all-black, or no prints.  It will instruct you how to set the spooler type to raw to reduce problems with printer drivers throwing away data due to memory issues:

http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/april-2006-houston-we-have-a-(printing)-problem/

Regards,
Mike

hi mike thank you for your reply,  you talk about the memory dumping but when i print in the web access which i do everyday it prints every print fie no problems, its just very tedious waiting for each file to upload before i can upload a new job thats why i like Qimage so mush as i can add jobs then when done sent to print, i read your article in the link and tried this, it sent 2 jobs and printed with parts missing, and didn't even attempt to print the second job, however i realised i had to apply the changes in the "effects" tab and also apply the profile that i had set, upon doing this i tried printing the 2 jobs, 1st job printed fully and i was really pleased, even more so when it started to print the second job, but thats when it started printing with parts missing again so i was a bit dissapointed, but on the bright side we are making progress, i wonder why the 1st job printed successfully and the 2nd one didn't, any more help i will gladly take as i am liking this software.
thanks again mike.
Regards.

Qimage sends more print data than your typical printing software due to its interpolation and sharpening.  If the printer is connected via ethernet, network queue size limits can come into play (it is better to connect via USB directly to the PC that is running Qimage).  As to the second job not printing, was the print size larger?  Did you load it from a saved job or setup: that could have loaded old driver settings and the "Effects" could be turned on in the driver for that job.

One other suggestion is to turn down your print resolution (on the Printers and Settings tab in QU).  If it's on Max (600) for example, turn it down to High (300) especially for larger posters.  There may also be other settings in the driver that have an effect on how much data they can handle; I'm not that familiar with the older DesignJet drivers.

Regards,
Mike

hi mike, both jobs was 300 ppi and are each 104MB in size, the settings i am using in the driver are as the pictures, please let me know if there is something amiss here. 

more images

 some more of printer driver tabs

I don't see anything inherently wrong in the settings.  The one thing I can't see are the Windows spooler settings so you'd have to check those manually in Windows Printers and Scanners: make sure "Enable Advanced Printing Features" is turned off and spool type is set to "Raw".  That's about all you can do.  You didn't say what PC and OS you are using and how much RAM is installed.  I see that the latest driver for the DJ 5500 is 2013: that's two years prior to when Windows 10 came out.  You might be experiencing some issues with the driver being so outdated.

Mike

hi, for some strange reason when rechecking advanced features it was checked again, so just unchecked and saved, just another thing also when sending the printjobs the printer pushed the paper  out of the pinch rollers, very odd, i will attach screenshots, thanks for all your help mike, really appreciate this.
regards
Terry.

another pic

In Qimage, you can also go to Edit, Preferences, Printing Options, and set the "Format" at the bottom to "Raw": just so QU's spool format agrees with what you set in Windows.

Regards,
Mike

hi mike, just looked at the trial version (which i am using and seen this highlighted, maybe this is my problem?)

You're not trying to print more than 4 photos at a time, are you?  Plus it would tell you that you can't do that in the trial version: it wouldn't just print part of the prints and leave pieces out.  Missing print pieces is definitely a misbehaving printer driver.

Mike

hi, no i was only trying to print 3, i have since purchased the full version as i like the software but worry i have wasted my money as i still have partial print problems, i uninstalled the printer driver and re installed it, restarted my pc and tried to print 4 copies of the same image and still partial prints problem, also it only prints 1 off instead of the 4, not sure what is going on here, i have no problems printing files with the web access page and has never done a partial print in all the time i have had the printer, the latest driver i can find for my designjet 5500 42" is 2013 which is quite old, i am at a loss now totally frustrated also.

You never did answer the question about what system you are running: how much RAM in your computer and what OS you are running (and is it a 32 bit or 64 bit OS)?  I notice the last screen shot says you only have 17 GB of disk space left.  That's pretty low too.  I'm starting to get the impression you are trying to run a 16 year old printer with a 7 year old driver... on a potato.  ;)  The only reason your prints are missing pieces is because the printer driver cannot handle the amount of data being sent to it, so I'm trying to figure out why that is the case.

Mike

hi Mike the previous picture is the installed hard disk space in the printer not the pc, also the other picture i posted tells you all about my pc if you look closely it is window 10 pro 64 bit intel core i7 processor @ 3.5 ghz and 16gb of ddr 3 high speed ram and have a samsung evo 1tb ssd with 300gb free space, i am confused myself, i have the printer connected via TP-Link TL-PA4010 Powerline Kit but i am going too try it with the ethernet cable that came with it, also i get what your saying about the printer been old and the driver been 7 years old but i cant find a recent one anywhere, i just dont get why the webaccess has no problems but QImage does, i love the fact that i can apply all my images and just send them all to the printer in one go rather than waiting for webaccess to upload every image one at a time, i hope we can figure this out and again thx for your time Mike

Regards.

The answer to why the web access tool works is what I said before: it is not sending as much (image) data to the printer so it can get away with printing the sizes you are printing.  It's like driving 35 MPH in your car all the time and everything is fine but the one time you get it on the highway and get it up to 60 or 70 MPH, you notice a problem: pushing the car harder has exposed an underlying problem... which is what is going on here in that Qimage expects the printer to perform at its design specifications given media size and PPI.

Now, getting the printer off that Powerline kit and connecting it directly to the PC that is runninng Qimage may correct the problem.  Ethernet print queues have limits so I usually recommend connecting via USB but I'm not even sure the DJ 5500 has USB.  One other thing you could try is:

- In Qimage, go to Edit, Preferences, Multithreading, Print Processing Threads
- Set that Print Processing Threads to 1 (single core)
- Retry printing

It'll take longer to print but setting it to single core will cause QU to send data to the driver slower, which could help out an ailing/old printer driver by not asking it to use as much memory at one time.

Mike

hi Mike you are a super super superstar!!, just printed 6 jobs off no problem, yea its a little slower to process but who cares!, guess my pc was too fast for the printer to handle the data, thinking about it webaccess was fairly slow at sending the files, i will have to tweak the processing threads maybe try it on slightly higher settings a bit at a time to find the happy medium, just one other question, when adding multiple image jobs is there a way to set it so it prints the jobs you add first to print them first if you know what i mean?
Thanks again sir!
Regards.
Terry

I'm afraid you got me on that one.  I don't know what you mean.  If you are adding multiple photos to a job, the ones you add first will print first unless you have print sorting turned on which sorts prints by size.  Check the "Auto sort" button under the live view: button with 3 rectangles and a down arrow.  If that button is in color (blue), auto sorting is on: just click it to turn it off.  Not sure if that's what you mean.

Mike

yes thats what i meant, i wanted the jobs i add first to print first and last job added to print last.
regards.

Then I think you mean you want the prints to print in order, not the jobs.  The job is the entire print job: the collection of prints you've added to the live view.  If you add a bunch of prints to the live view and then click the print button in Qimage, that's one job.

Regards,
Mike

right ok, yes i want the prints to print in order in which i add them if that makes sense but upon trying this it seems to print the last print that i added first, i have turned off auto sort also.

Then collate is turned on: either in QU or in the driver.  In QU, you can check Edit, Preferences, Print and Page Formatting, Collate Pages, Page Print Order, and make sure it is set to "Forward".  If that's already set, you'll need to click the Properties button on the Printers and Settings tab to open the driver: look for a collate option in the printer driver and turn it off.

Mike