Conversion Tips

This page provides knowledge about document conversion tips. It covers conversion tips for documents such as pdf, excel sheets and video files.

Video Conversion Tips

Autoplay and Loop Video (In Hotspots)

Automatic video playback and repeated video playback works by adding a keyword to the video file. 

Depending on the keyword, the video is automatically played or played over and over again, only when video is added as a hotspot.

Select Video

On the Pitcher Web Admin module:

1. Open the instance, select the video to play autoplay or in an endless loop.

2. Go to the keyword field
   

3. Please insert one or both of the keywords, depending on what should happen to the video file.

• Automatic video playback: 'autoplay'

• Endless play: 'loop'

4. The keywords are case sensitive and can also be used individually. Save the keywords after adding.

 5. To accept the keywords, press 'Save Changes' after adding the keywords

Embed Video in Presentation

Video files that are uploaded on Pitcher Admin can be added to Presentations as embedded contents. Multiple video files can be embedded on the same slide. A video file can be embedded once on the same slide.

In order for the video to loop our autoplay in Pitcher, you need to add it as a hotspot to a PPTX:

1. Select the presentation on Pitcher Admin you would like to add the video as a hotspot to

2. Click on Actions → Edit and go to Thumbnails 

3. Define the hotspot area (can be full screen) 

4. Select Launch other content 

5. Choose the video from step A where you have added the keywords loop and/or autoplay

6. Tick Embed

7. Save → Save slide → save

Excel Conversion Tips

Excel sheets can be converted into web forms to act like customized calculators with data sets. Formulas that are working with input fields can be loaded to Pitcher Admin and converted forms can be distributed to users/groups. 

Supported Formulas

• Math & Trig - SUM, SUMPRODUCT, MAX, MIN, AVERAGE, ROUND, CEILING, FLOOR, ROUNDUP, ROUNDDOWN, INT, TRUNC, SQRT, MROUND, ABS, GCD, LCM, MOD, RAND, RANDBETWEEN, PRODUCT, COS, ACOS, SIN, ASIN, TAN, ATAN, PI, RADIANS, DEGREES.

• Text - CHAR, CODE, CONCATENATE, DOLLAR, EXACT, FIND, LEFT, LEN, LOWER, MID, RIGHT, ROMAN, SUBSTITUTE, TRIM, UNICHAR, UNICODE.

• References - VLOOKUP

• Logical - AND, OR, XOR, IF, ISBLANK, IFERROR, IFNA, NOT, TRUE, FALSE.

Conversion

• Using correct syntax is important, some desktop apps can seamlessly correct syntax errors which is not valid with web forms. Using "Number" for a math formula or "text" for a text formula is recommended.

• In Excel sheets, decimal numbers are used to round real values during display whereas calculations are executed with real values. In web forms, decimal values are calculated with displayed values. In order to get more accurate results, length of decimal numbers should be set carefully. Checking output accuracy may be a safe practice.

• Graphics, pivot tables and macros are not supported

• Data with high number cells may cause performance issues.

• Hiding the data sheets (for VLOOKUP function) can help both in security and performance. You can move the data into a separate tab and hide it.

• Using common fonts is recommended.

PDF Conversion Tips

Keeping Document Features & Security

By default Pitcher's conversion engine optimizes and compresses documents you upload for optimal viewing output. This process might also remove your password protection. However, if you have specific features that become lost post-conversion (such as passwords, interactivity, color codes or multi-layer text/images) you can turn this feature off per document by simply adding "SkipCompression" as a keyword to the PDF you are uploading.

First Thing to Try

Make sure PDF is standard PDF-X compatible. For Mac, opening in Preview and exporting as PDF or printing to PDF ensures standards based PDF, prior to uploading.

Vector Graphs

Vector Graphs seem to be comparably small in terms of disk space. However, during file display, each graph is rendered on run time and consume computational power and device memory. PDF files utilizing Vector graphs can cause performance bottlenecks especially with mobile devices as most devices run on limited resources. Solution to this issue is replacing vectorial components with image files. 

High-Resolution Graphs

Graphs with the resolution higher than 150dpi can consume more computational power and device memory. PDF files utilizing high resolution can cause performance bottlenecks especially with mobile devices as most devices run on limited resources. Solution to this issue is reducing the image quality, converting pages into RGB images and preserving text information or flattening the PDF.

PDF View Modes

You can force Pitcher to open any PDF file in different modes. In order to do this please simply add pm=... as a keyword of that PDF file

• pm=0 --> Magazine Mode

• pm=1 --> Article Mode

• pm=2 --> Slide Mode

• pm=3 --> Ask user

Thumbnails converted with incorrect colors

PDF documents are created in the CMYK (Print Colors) which is not suitable for digital publishing. They are converted but they have different colors. When exported with RGB which is for digital use and re-uploaded again to Pitcher, the colors are converted as expected.

PDF Files with more than 100 pages

In order to convert files more efficient, for PDF documents that are composed of more than 100 pages, thumbnail are not rendered during conversion and they wont be visible on Pitcher Web Admin.