14th Mar 2014 20:25 #1Pynot MemberJ

14th Mar 2014 20:25 #1
Pynot
Member
Join Date: Feb 2014

Hi,

I need to download a PDF file from a web page that uses Flash Player as a document viewer (I guess it uses "Flexpaper Viewer" tool to protect the PDFs from download). Is it possible to download it? Or would I have to convert those SWF files to PDF (I don`t even know if that is possible...)?

EDIT: So, this Flexpaper Viewer is the PDF converted to SWF and split (each page gets one .swf file).

Here is what I did:
1: Grabbed the swf links using Adblock Plus function "Open blockable links"
2: Created a download list on IDM with those links and downloaded them.
3: Batch converted the .swf files to .tiff using SWFTools (swfrender command line tool) with this script:
Code:
for %F in (*.swf) do "C:swftoolsswfrender.exe" "%F" -o "%~dpnF.tiff" -X 1210 -Y 1712
-x = width, -y = height
4: Created a multipage PDF from those TIFFs using Irfanview Tumbnails
5: Now I'm doing a OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scan on the pdf with Abbyy FineReader 11 Corporate.

After the scan, I think the document will become a text searchable pdf, not 100% but the biggest part.

Thanks everyone that helped.

Best Regards.
Last edited by Pynot; 16th Mar 2014 at 18:02.
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15th Mar 2014 12:50 #2
Throndor
Member
Join Date: Mar 2014

Hey there,

as far as I know downloading the PDF file directly is not possible. You could try to download the swf file from the website using the "Flash and Video"-addon for Firefox (http://tinyurl.com/68ttf76). Then you have the file on your PC and print it or use a virtual printer to convert it to PDF (if that is possible in this case).

Best Regards
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16th Mar 2014 09:08 #3
Pynot
Member
Join Date: Feb 2014

Originally Posted by Throndor
Hey there,

as far as I know downloading the PDF file directly is not possible. You could try to download the swf file from the website using the "Flash and Video"-addon for Firefox (http://tinyurl.com/68ttf76). Then you have the file on your PC and print it or use a virtual printer to convert it to PDF (if that is possible in this case).

Best Regards
Thanks for the help m8.

I managed to get all the swf files for each page with IDM (692 swf files).

Now I need to batch convert those swf frames into high dpi image or pdf file, so I can use Abbyy FineReader with OCR to create a searchable PDF.

Does anyone know a command to that on Windows 7, using FFMPEG or SWFTOOLS (SWFRENDER)?

Thanks.
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16th Mar 2014 10:38 #4
poisondeathray
Member
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Canada

These are compressed swf shape elements (not video or jpg/png elements), so ffmpeg/mencoder/libav cannot open them

You can use swfrender from swftools to batch render each swf to a lossless png
Then you have the option to convert that png image sequence to whatever

Just replace the "PATHs" with the actual directory paths for swfrender.exe, the input directory, and output directory

Code:
for %a in ("*.swf") do "SWF_RENDER_PATHswfrender" "INPUT_PATH\%a" -o "OUTPUT_PATH\%~na.png"
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16th Mar 2014 17:18 #5
Pynot
Member
Join Date: Feb 2014

Originally Posted by poisondeathray
These are compressed swf shape elements (not video or jpg/png elements), so ffmpeg/mencoder/libav cannot open them

You can use swfrender from swftools to batch render each swf to a lossless png
Then you have the option to convert that png image sequence to whatever

Just replace the "PATHs" with the actual directory paths for swfrender.exe, the input directory, and output directory

Code:
for %a in ("*.swf") do "SWF_RENDER_PATHswfrender" "INPUT_PATH\%a" -o "OUTPUT_PATH\%~na.png"
Thank you very much for your help.
I had found that script to batch convert them some hours ago, but I've converted the .swfs to .tiff instead. Do you think that tiff has less quality than png, I mean do you think that png would be better for a OCR reading on Abbyy FineReader than tiff? Or a change in the container format has no difference in quality?
Thanks m8.
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