This may be a rather naïve question, but I thought I’d ask anyway.
I usually work on shorter projects that I can print fairly quickly. At the moment, however, I’m struggling with a 200-page collection, which obviously involves a huge amount of data. From the moment I click Print, it takes at least five minutes before the printer actually starts printing.
I assume my computer simply isn’t powerful enough (it has 16 GB of RAM).
Is there any way — probably outside Dorico — to temporarily stop all unnecessary background processes on my computer, in order to free up as much memory as possible for Dorico while it prepares the document for printing?
How is your printer connected to the computer? Large amounts of data over a bad WiFi connection can cost time too …
If it’s just a straightforward print job, I would save to a PDF file, close Dorico and then print the pdf if you think RAM is an issue. It is always best as @TonH said, to use a direct printer connection if possible (i.e., USB cable).
What exactly is your computer? (CPU, etc.)
RAM needs might depend on what sample libraries you’re using.
How is the speed of the document otherwise?
Intel Core Ultra 9285H
RAM 32
Video card 128 MB
Windows 11 Home
It was not the cheapest one, but is obviously not a top gamer laptop.
I’m not focusing on sound, so I use the default of Dorico in all way related to sound…
Is there a Windows utility that can show you how the RAM is being used? RAM may not be the limiting factor.
It may simply be that there’s an awful lot of processing to do – including what the print driver needs to do, and converting to PCL5 or whatever.
What kind of document is this? An opera / theatre score? How many flows and players? Dorico’s Project Statistics will show this, as well as how many “frames” are used (e.g. bars with music.)
It is piano only. More than 200 short pieces. Actually it is a collection of all piano pieces I’m teaching little kids and semi advanced. Say, ABRSM Prep Test to grade 6. Most of them is not very complicated, so not like the score of Wozzeck.
I didn’t make much editing either, master pages with specific flow headers for each piece.
I will look after what you said about viewing RAM usage, thank your!
My guess is that the speed here depends mostly on your printer and its setup. I’ve never printed a 200 page document, but I wouldn’t be surprised if simply sending it to the printer took five minutes in the setup we have at my workplace. It’s easily taken me that long to send smaller documents (with many pictures, which of course slows things down) to print.
However, if it’s only a problem with a project this big I wouldn’t worry. I assume you don’t print 200-page documents often. And if you do, saving it as a PDF like kasky1 suggested is probably a good idea. (I would expect that to still take time though, as I would not be surprised if it turns out neither Dorico nor the power of your computer is the bottleneck.) 200 pages is a lot… that’s almost an Arban (all brass musicians will get the reference). Might even be worth getting the book professionally printed instead of doing it yourself.
You could do some simple tests to see where most time is spent
exporting the document as PDF from the print menu gives you an idea how long Dorico needs to process the document.
printing the resulting PDF gives you an idea how long it takes to transport the data to the printer, and the time the printer needs to start printing.
So the printer has an impact on printing speed as well? I thought it depends only on the computer itself and whenever data arrives to the printer, it doesn’t hezitate, just does it!
Anyway, many thanks for all thoughts you shared, will try it converting to PDF, and let see…
This is a Windows issue that doesn’t affect most Mac users (YMMV for certain networks). I used to write print servers, spoolers and related utilities for Win 3, 95, NT and so on.
No, I do not have a specific fix—not enough details about your setup to begin guessing. I can say that many solutions do exist for your problem if bad enough. For example, an old PC can be put into service as a print server/spooler for an entire network.
as #Kasky1 suggests: Write a PDF, print from this – in smaller portions. Since your PC seems to be well equipped – but it is also depending on how full are your disks/memories; if very full the computer cannot correctly write the temporary and invisible printing file. I would try to send only 10 pages to the printer at once – if this works fine; that’s your workaround. If not, then I’m pretty sure there is a different (also bigger) problem. Hope you are successful – all the best wishes!
When I asked this question, I wasn’t frustrated at all. Dorico is an absolutely fantastic program, and I’ve really enjoyed using it for more than two years now.
Since I usually work with much smaller files, everything runs perfectly smoothly in my day-to-day work.
What really got me curious was simply whether, with such a large amount of data — more than 200 pages of music — it would be possible to streamline the computer environment as much as possible, so that the machine could devote virtually all of its available resources to Dorico while preparing the document for printing.
There probably isn’t much you can do to your system to improve the printing issue. Depending on the sound libraries you use, you may want your next system to have 32GB or even 64GB RAM. If you can upgrade the memory on your current system, all the better. Although I have not used Windows for over 25 years, I would imagine that it still uses a fair amount of its drive for cached memory which would slow down any system. This is just something to consider when the time is right for you.
Yes, the pagefile still exists, but the impact on current system is absolutely minimal, especially with SSDs. This file will be used only in cases where the RAM is overloaded, then Windows starts sending memory pages to this file.
However, this is not limited to just Windows. MacOS uses the same technique, just with dynamic files (called swapfile0, swapfile1, etc.). As far as I remember they are stored in the APFS Systemcontainer named “VM”.
So the paging mechanism is not a Windows feature, it is used in MacOS as well and even in the largest Linux/Unix systems. In all cases, more RAM is always better, I’m not buying a machine that has less than 64GB.