PPTX to PDF conversion is taking a long time on certain machines

GroupDocs.Conversion Product Family
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1

Hello,

I’m getting a strange behaviour with the conversion of a pptx document to pdf taking a very large amount of time on several windows machines while on other machines it is running very fast.

The following code is used to convert the document:

ConversionLogger convlogger = new ConversionLogger(logwebprint, sJobID);
ConverterSettings convsettings = new ConverterSettings();
convsettings.setLogger(convlogger); //define logging mechanism to log progress of the conversion

Converter converter = new Converter(nonpdffile.getAbsolutePath(), () -> convsettings);
	
PdfConvertOptions options = new PdfConvertOptions();
logwebprint.log(LogHandle.s_INFO, "ProcJob[" + sJobID + "]: Starting document conversion.");
converter.convert(convertpdffile.getAbsolutePath(), options);
logwebprint.log(LogHandle.s_INFO, "ProcJob[" + sJobID + "]: Document conversion finished.");

The Groupdocs.Conversion version used is 25.9.
The powerpoint document used to print is:
Test-powerpoint.zip (23.6 KB)

This contains only one empty sheet.

The java process on the machine where it takes 17 minutes to convert shows the following system specifications:
Windows Server 2022 10.0
Running on a amd64 64 bit, available processors 4, available memory 1820.5MB

The logging of the conversion process:

16-12-25 15:00:39.694 [  1] Info webprint: ProcJob[552]: Starting document conversion.
16-12-25 15:00:39.710 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[552]: Determine loaded for source document _lms_2004003_x_x_112730607275539405_Test-powerpoint.pptx ...
16-12-25 15:06:08.797 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[552]: ... loader selected.
16-12-25 15:06:08.804 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[552]: Loading source document _lms_2004003_x_x_112730607275539405_Test-powerpoint.pptx ...
16-12-25 15:06:08.818 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[552]: ... document loaded.
16-12-25 15:06:08.819 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[552]: Main document will be converted.
16-12-25 15:06:08.821 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[552]: Starting conversion of _lms_2004003_x_x_112730607275539405_Test-powerpoint.pptx...
16-12-25 15:06:08.853 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[552]:  ... pipeline selected ... 
16-12-25 15:17:00.442 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[552]:  ... conversion completed.
16-12-25 15:17:00.791 [  1] Info webprint: ProcJob[552]: Document conversion finished.

The logging from the Converter shows that it takes nearly 6 minutes to select a loader and then next another 11 minutes to do the actual conversion.
During those 17 minutes the java process only uses about 5% cpu the whole time, with total cpu usage of the system hovering on 30%.

When I run the same application on another machine it takes only 30 seconds to complete.
The java process on this machine shows the following system specifications:
Windows 11 10.0
Running on a amd64 64 bit, available processors 12, available memory 1365.5MB

The logging of the conversion process for this run is:

17-12-25 09:35:55.045 [  1] Info webprint: ProcJob[655]: Starting document conversion.
17-12-25 09:35:55.055 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[655]: Determine loaded for source document _lms_2004003_x_x_8820370273024713626_Test-powerpoint.pptx ...
17-12-25 09:36:05.811 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[655]: ... loader selected.
17-12-25 09:36:05.811 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[655]: Loading source document _lms_2004003_x_x_8820370273024713626_Test-powerpoint.pptx ...
17-12-25 09:36:05.811 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[655]: ... document loaded.
17-12-25 09:36:05.811 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[655]: Main document will be converted.
17-12-25 09:36:05.811 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[655]: Starting conversion of _lms_2004003_x_x_8820370273024713626_Test-powerpoint.pptx...
17-12-25 09:36:05.811 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[655]:  ... pipeline selected ... 
17-12-25 09:36:23.077 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[655]:  ... conversion completed.
17-12-25 09:36:23.225 [  1] Info webprint: ProcJob[655]: Document conversion finished.

I have also tried older versions of the library and see if that’s making any difference. On the total time that it takes to do the conversion it has no effect, but I do see a small difference in the logging output of the Converter.
The conversion takes the same 5 minutes to select a loader. But then the conversion itself is done within a second. The call to the converter.convert() function only does not return until 10 minutes later.
Logging from GroupDocs.Conversion 25.5.1:

16-12-25 16:40:35.030 [  1] Info webprint: ProcJob[555]: Starting document conversion.
16-12-25 16:40:35.049 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[555]: Determine loaded for source document _lms_2004003_x_x_1498559434792369916_Test-powerpoint.pptx ...
16-12-25 16:45:41.164 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[555]: ... loader selected.
16-12-25 16:45:41.164 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[555]: Loading source document _lms_2004003_x_x_1498559434792369916_Test-powerpoint.pptx ...
16-12-25 16:45:41.164 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[555]: ... document loaded.
16-12-25 16:45:41.179 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[555]: Main document will be converted.
16-12-25 16:45:41.179 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[555]: Starting conversion of _lms_2004003_x_x_1498559434792369916_Test-powerpoint.pptx...
16-12-25 16:45:41.179 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[555]:  ... pipeline selected ... 
16-12-25 16:45:41.195 [  1] Debug webprint: ProcJob[555]:  ... conversion completed.
16-12-25 16:56:14.474 [  1] Info webprint: ProcJob[555]: Document conversion finished.

I hope you can help me find out what is going on here, as the extreme delay in handling the conversion is resulting in problems for our software running on those problem machines.

2

@ravitsec

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out and providing the detailed information about the conversion issue you are experiencing.

Your request has been received and will be reviewed by the appropriate team. We will get back to you as soon as possible with further assistance.

Best regards,
Technical Support Team
Aspose Community Forum

3

Hello @ravitsec ,

Thank you for using our product. We have created a ticket in our tracking system under the ID CONVERSIONJAVA-3049 regarding your request. Our development team will investigate it as soon as possible.

Before proceeding, could you please clarify whether Windows system fonts are installed on your Windows Server machine? Quite often, they are not present there by default, and we assume that the slow conversion might be caused by this.

Finally, to accurately reproduce your use case, please specify which Java versions are used on the two Windows machines.

4

The java version is on both machines Amazon Corretto OpenJDK 1.8.0_412-b08.

About the fonts:
We have checked the fonts and it looks like the standard Windows fonts are there for at least the Administrator.
But while checking for those windows system fonts, we also noticed another difference which I haven’t mentioned yet.

The application on the Windows Server is running as a service under the “Local system” account.
On the other windows machine with Windows 11 I was running the application not as a service, but just by double clicking the executable. So as a normal user, not the “Local system” account.

I have now also tried to run the application as a service with the “Local system” account on my Windows 11 machine and I get the same extreme delay in the conversion.
So there seems to be a big difference between running the conversion as a normal logged in user or as the “Local system” account.

5

@ravitsec ,

Thank you very much for this clarification. I will pass your observations on to our development team.

As soon as I receive any feedback from them, I will let you know right away.