Need Help Onyx 12?

[jfiscus]

We are having major issues with LARGE files in Onyx 11.1. (postershop AND productionhouse) We print BIG stuff a lot more often now a days, so the RIP crashing or not processing the files correctly causes major headaches and time delays. Our RIP computers were custom built for us with dual SSDs, fast processors, etc a year ago. They RIP really quick, but the super-large files (larger than the average 54' trailer) seem to crash the RIP; especially really wide wall wraps or XL trailers.

Anyone here from Onyx or anyone with experience with jobs like these and Onyx?
We are ready to upgrade to 12 if it will fix these issues, but if not; what other options do we have?

FWIW, we run one Mimaki JV3, 2 Epson Surecolors, and two Mimaki plotters off of our current RIPs.

 

[Pauly]

Upgrade to thrive with the adobe engine.
Also your computer probably needs more ram.
Open up task manager next time ripping and you'll see what gets used heavily. I have an xeon quad core processor with hyper threading and 8gb of ram. My processor runs so smooth, but the ram gets used heavily. I'll be going to 32gb when i have the chance to.

Also you'll get the flock of birds swooping in saying "down grade to caldera" not in those exact words though, But onyx works brilliantly. 12.1 is the newest. I rip single files that are gigabytes of size regularly. never had any version of thrive crash.

 

[thomlov]

I am in the same situation as you, we rip alot of big stuff. Big banners etc, often over 100 m2 per file.
We have a intel i7 with SSD + 32 gig ram.

We just upgraded from Onyx Thrive 11.1 to 12.1
It was a huuuuuuuge speed increase, and we save almost hours every day on the upgrade.
Both rip and also transfering files to our printers is alot faster.

I checked the rip, and i ripped a file of 220 cm x 48 meters in 13 minutes now, where before i would guess over an hour for the same file.

 

[jfiscus]

I am in the same situation as you, we rip alot of big stuff. Big banners etc, often over 100 m2 per file.
We have a intel i7 with SSD + 32 gig ram.

We just upgraded from Onyx Thrive 11.1 to 12.1
It was a huuuuuuuge speed increase, and we save almost hours every day on the upgrade.
Both rip and also transfering files to our printers is alot faster.

I checked the rip, and i ripped a file of 220 cm x 48 meters in 13 minutes now, where before i would guess over an hour for the same file.

We have i7 processors also with 16GB of RAM currently.

The PC itself doesn't get overloaded; the XL files that are ripping just error-out and disappear from the RIP before they finish ripping. The files themselves aren't "super large", as larger images like this we usually save at 75 DPI or as vectors-only at 10pct scale.

220cm x 48m is a large file, 13 minutes sounds amazing for that.
We currently do not have Thrive, upgrading to Thrive is around $4,000.
However, just upgrading to Onyx 12 is only $1000....

 

[thomlov]

We do very seldom have problems with errors in RIP. It can happen from time to time, but always gives a rip error right at the start, then we need to find the error in the file or use another format. I think you will see less errors with the all PDF workflow and adobe RIP than you do today with postershop.

All things considered neither $1000 or $4000 is expensive if you count lost hours and lost production time on printers over for example over a 3 year period.

If you have a certain file that errors out, you can send it to me, and i can try ripping it in Thrive...

 

[Lane J]

I run Thrive and I do have problems ripping large files as well. Happened today actually on some 20' banners. When I bring the files in halfscale, then resize to 200% the PDF engine just stops ripping right away. The only way to get around this, that I've found, is to lower the resolution of the file. I didn't have this issue running Production House, and the rip error isn't very common.
Other than this annoyance, Thrive has been much quicker ripping files and less errors occur overall.

 

[jfiscus]

We do very seldom have problems with errors in RIP. It can happen from time to time, but always gives a rip error right at the start, then we need to find the error in the file or use another format. I think you will see less errors with the all PDF workflow and adobe RIP than you do today with postershop.

All things considered neither $1000 or $4000 is expensive if you count lost hours and lost production time on printers over for example over a 3 year period.

If you have a certain file that errors out, you can send it to me, and i can try ripping it in Thrive...

Can you email me so I can get your address to send an example file link to? I cannot find the PM thing here anymore... my email is jason(at)cruxroadboardz(dot)com

 

[thomlov]

I've sent you an email

 

[ikarasu]

Can you email me so I can get your address to send an example file link to? I cannot find the PM thing here anymore... my email is jason(at)cruxroadboardz(dot)com

You can download onyx 12.1 as a trial. Works for a couple of weeks... and it copies over all your settings from previous onyx. I'd say give that a try, see if it fixes your issues or not before upgrading.

I will say..12.1 rips 5-10x faster than 10/11 rips... so it may be worth it just for that. But.. free trial, so give it a try and see.

 

[thomlov]

Well, for what it's worth, this 2.8 gig TIF file ripped without errors. I tried 5 times, ripping for my oce arizona, HP latex and roland eco-solvent, on different modes.

The HP is contone so it ripped in 1 second (the printer rips onboard)
But the others ripped the image in 1 minute, 42 seconds.

 

[Bly]

I've noticed a couple of weird things in Thrive 12.1.
I'm not sure if it's my system but occasionally a job will crash if opened through Rip Queue but if opened with Job Editor will rip properly.

 

[Andy_warp]

This nearly never happens when you make super lean print files through a ground up prepress process.
We go in to each file and remove extraneous crap for every file. Things like nested clipping masks, and sloppy compositing can kill you with even a 20 footer!
We (try) to enforce a no Indesign policy so we can pare the files down and control spot colors and effects. When we do get indesign we recomposite in illustrator.
We've found working with images in Illustrator that have been scaled or rotated...can be problematic.

I just printed a 100' x 7' double sided dye sub cover for a well known graphic design software company...it had a line of text with a 60 foot drop shadow.
The effect clipped in Illustrator because it surpassed the (2 gig?) memory limit. It had to be recomposited in the background image with photoshop and re placed in illustrator with vector text over.

There are so so many things you can do in Adobe software, and so so many things that shouldn't be done. For us it's usually the construction of the art...not the rip.
When you are dealing with such large print files...resolution becomes a huge factor. For E3 last year I received a single .psb file for 30 foot tall x 400 plus feet of wall. The whole job ended up being 60-65 10' by 30' seamed fabric covers for 5 or 6 walls.
You can hit Adobe resolution ceilings very quickly going big like this.

Grand format printing is just different like this, than even wide format.
...don't get me started on .eps files...

 

[Andy_warp]

This nearly never happens when you make super lean print files through a ground up prepress process.
We go in to each file and remove extraneous crap for every file. Things like nested clipping masks, and sloppy compositing can kill you with even a 20 footer!
We (try) to enforce a no Indesign policy so we can pare the files down and control spot colors and effects. When we do get indesign we recomposite in illustrator.
We've found working with images in Illustrator that have been scaled or rotated...can be problematic.

I just printed a 100' x 7' double sided dye sub cover for a well known graphic design software company...it had a line of text with a 60 foot drop shadow.
The effect clipped in Illustrator because it surpassed the (2 gig?) memory limit. It had to be recomposited in the background image with photoshop and re placed in illustrator with vector text over.

There are so so many things you can do in Adobe software, and so so many things that shouldn't be done. For us it's usually the construction of the art...not the rip.
When you are dealing with such large print files...resolution becomes a huge factor. For E3 last year I received a single .psb file for 30 foot tall x 400 plus feet of wall. The whole job ended up being 60-65 10' by 30' seamed fabric covers for 5 or 6 walls.
You can hit Adobe resolution ceilings very quickly going big like this.

Grand format printing is just different like this, than even wide format.
...don't get me started on .eps files...

 

[Pauly]

Neat job. I love doing large jobs when we get them.

 

[Andy_warp]

Neat job. I love doing large jobs when we get them.

Thanks! This was a fun one! We get to see some neat stuff from time to time...it breaks up the monotony of seeing giant medical probe graphics! ha ha ha Talk about sterile.

 

[nate]

Also you'll get the flock of birds swooping in saying "down grade to caldera" not in those exact words though, But onyx works brilliantly. 12.1 is the newest. I rip single files that are gigabytes of size regularly. never had any version of thrive crash.

Wow-- Don't get out much? Caldera is light years ahead of Onyx. We made the switch and would never look back. Biggest feature of Caldera is no more crashing!

 

[danno]

I've been working with Onyx since version 3. I have found that Onyx isn't fond of large files. That being said, we keep our files below 2GB. We are using Production House 12.1. The PC is custom built by Casey at Signburst. It features an i7-5930K with 64GB of ram. HDD include 500GB ssd and 4 1-2 TB data storage drives. I ripped 2 sides of a standard 53' trailer, at the same time, in less than 10 minutes.

 

[Pauly]

Wow-- Don't get out much? Caldera is light years ahead of Onyx. We made the switch and would never look back. Biggest feature of Caldera is no more crashing!

No issues with Onyx for me. Unless i've done something.
And i don't think Caldera is "light years ahead"
Onyx colour management is second to none. The adobe engine is brilliant. File handling is great. Onyx is easy to use, it's setup as a professional based software. Caldera has to many windows, to much eye candy - looks like a toy for kids to use. If you don't know how to navigate through onyx, i feel sorry for you as it's quite easy.

I've been working with Onyx since version 3. I have found that Onyx isn't fond of large files. That being said, we keep our files below 2GB. We are using Production House 12.1. The PC is custom built by Casey at Signburst. It features an i7-5930K with 64GB of ram. HDD include 500GB ssd and 4 1-2 TB data storage drives. I ripped 2 sides of a standard 53' trailer, at the same time, in less than 10 minutes.

Nice PC build.
Curious, when you're ripping large files, What is your bottle neck? The RAM or CPU? by checking the windows task manager while ripping.
Most of my files are 500mb - 1gb. no issues ripping. when it's larger it juices up my RAM. Xeon processor doesn't break a sweat. i'm lacking ram with 8gb.

 

[danno]

[QUOTE
Nice PC build.
Curious, when you're ripping large files, What is your bottle neck? The RAM or CPU? by checking the windows task manager while ripping.
Most of my files are 500mb - 1gb. no issues ripping. when it's larger it juices up my RAM. Xeon processor doesn't break a sweat. i'm lacking ram with 8gb.[/QUOTE]
Since I've upgraded the RAM, I don't slow down. This i7 processor is only a 6 core. The old rip was a dual quad core Xeon with 24GB RAM. Casey did some bench testing fo us and said I would be fine with the i7. Next time I RIP a trailer, I'll check the gauges to see what she's doing.

 

[Andy_warp]

I really do prefer Onyx...for the same reasons Pauly mentioned. Caldera seems a lot less robust with the control you are allowed. I also find myself going backwards through tabs...

I guess if we all get fast enough computers with unlimited hard drives, no designer will EVER have to (do their job) I mean make a clean file again...right?!