Streaming large PDFs from SharePoint

5
votes

I have a client that wants to store large PDFs (>700MB) on SharePoint 2013. The problem is that viewing the PDF is currently requiring the entire PDF to be download before displaying the first page. I need the browser to display each page of the PDF as it downloads, a feature I believe Adobe calls "Fast Web View" or "Byte Streaming". Here is what I know:

  • "Fast Web View" is enabled on the PDF document in the Document Properties window.
  • I can verify that the PDF is "Linearized" by reading the ASCII content.
  • I have checked the PDF reading options from the PDF Accessibility.
  • The client has SharePoint 2013 on premise installed.
  • SharePoint's File Handling is set to permissive.
  • I have verified PDF is an AllowedInlinedownedMinme type of the Web Application.

Anything else I should check or configure?

2
pdfsharepointsharepoint-2013
PDFs open in Word Online / Web Apps. support.office.com/en-ca/article/…. You may also have to look at this configuration. technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee837425.aspx – Glenn Ferrie
More testing... More Info: I created a new IIS site on the same server as my SharePoint sites, I wanted to test my PDF using just IIS and IE. This configuration worked as desired. So this implies to me that SharePoint doesn't support linearized PDF. Anyone else have a work around or know of any SharePoint settings to resolve this? – terahex

2 Answers

3
votes

It is not enough if the PDF files are linearized (technical term in PDF parlance) or optimized for fast web view (marketing term for that feature).

There need to be two conditions met before taking advantage of fast web view working for the end user:

  1. The PDF viewer needs to be able to make use of the linearized/optimized PDF file features.
  2. The PDF serving remote host (in this case SharePoint) needs to be properly configured to honor 'byte range requests' by the viewer, so downloading chunks of the PDF file may be delivered "out of order".

However,...

  • ...I do not know if SharePoint servers in general do support the second requirement;

  • ...if SharePoint is not the problem, you may want to check which PDF viewer is actually in use in that environment (test it with Adobe Reader -- that one takes advantage of linearized PDF features for sure).

See also this answer to a question from today, which gives a few more technical details:

0
votes

A co-worker identified the problem after comparing the download from SharePoint to that of a working site using WireShark. The SharePoint site didn't include "Byte ranging" in the response headers. In order to enable that feature in SharePoint, you have to enable BlobCache. Beware, BlobCache is not supported in SharePoint foundations.