Issue with PDF to PDF/A-1B or 3B conversion

Hello!

We have an issue that Aspose is generating errors when trying to convert PDF to PDF/A - it is related to PDFJAVA-39334 raised on 14 April 2020 and no respose seen until then so that I’ve decided to create new topic for that.

error messages look that:
{
“isValid”: true,
“conversionLog”: “<Compliance Name="Log" Operation="Validation" Target="PDF/A-1B">1.0Copyright (c) 2001-2022 Aspose Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.2022-10-11 14:02:55<File Version="1,7" Name="Muster Rechnungen mehrseitig QR-Code.pdf" Pages="3"><Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.4" ObjectID="3" Page="1" Convertable="True">The transparency is prohibited (‘Group’ key)<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.4" ObjectID="28" Page="2" Convertable="True">The transparency is prohibited (‘Group’ key)<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.4" ObjectID="31" Page="3" Convertable="True">The transparency is prohibited (‘Group’ key)<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="Annex" ObjectID="42" Convertable="True">Object is compressed<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="Annex" Convertable="True">The xref stream is prohibited<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.4" Page="0" Convertable="True">The transparency is prohibited (‘Group’ key)<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.4" Page="2" Convertable="True">The transparency is prohibited (‘Group’ key)<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.4" Page="3" Convertable="True">The transparency is prohibited (‘Group’ key)<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.3.4" ObjectID="8" Page="1" Convertable="True">Font ‘ArialMT’ is not embedded<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.3.4" ObjectID="21" Page="1" Convertable="True">Font ‘Arial-BoldMT’ is not embedded<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.7.11" Convertable="True">Required property ‘pdfaid:part’ for schema ‘pdfaid’ missing<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.7.11" Convertable="True">Required property ‘pdfaid:conformance’ for schema ‘pdfaid’ missing<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.2.4" ObjectID="20" Convertable="True">The image interpolation is prohibited”,
“validationLog”: “<Compliance Name="Log" Operation="Validation" Target="PDF/A-1B">1.0Copyright (c) 2001-2022 Aspose Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.2022-10-11 14:02:57<File Version="1,7" Name="Muster Rechnungen mehrseitig QR-Code.pdf" Pages="3">”
{
“isValid”: false,
“conversionLog”: “<Compliance Name="Log" Operation="Validation" Target="PDF/A-1B">1.0Copyright (c) 2001-2022 Aspose Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.2022-10-11 14:04:43<File Version="1,7" Name="Rechnung_108428.pdf" Pages="1"><Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.3.6" ObjectID="4" Page="1" Convertable="True">Width information for glyphs is inconsistent in embedded font ‘DDACTR+Arial,Bold’<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.3.6" ObjectID="7" Page="1" Convertable="True">Width information for glyphs is inconsistent in embedded font ‘DDACTR+MicrosoftSansSerif’<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.3.6" ObjectID="10" Page="1" Convertable="True">Width information for glyphs is inconsistent in embedded font ‘DDACTR+Arial’<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.7.3" Convertable="True">Document information entry ‘ModDate’ not synchronized with metadata property ‘xmp:ModifyDate’<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.7.11" Convertable="True">Required property ‘pdfaid:part’ for schema ‘pdfaid’ missing<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.7.11" Convertable="True">Required property ‘pdfaid:conformance’ for schema ‘pdfaid’ missing<Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.6.1" ObjectID="24" Page="0" Convertable="True">The key ‘EmbeddedFiles’ is prohibited for PDF object Names”,
“validationLog”: “<Compliance Name="Log" Operation="Validation" Target="PDF/A-1B">1.0Copyright (c) 2001-2022 Aspose Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.2022-10-11 14:04:43<File Version="1,7" Name="Rechnung_108428.pdf" Pages="1"><Problem Severity="Error" Clause="6.7.3" Convertable="True">Document information entry ‘ModDate’ not synchronized with metadata property ‘xmp:ModifyDate’”

Can you please fix this issue? I can convert those files with tools like desktop version of https://www.pdf2go.com/ so we all know that the files are ok.

Can you please fix the library?

Kind regards,
Piotr

Hi @Piotr875

I am sorry for the inconvenience. This ticket PDFJAVA-39334 is still on our internal queue. As soon as we fixed it, I will let you know.

@Piotr875

Would you please share if you tried using 22.9 version of the API as well? If issue still happens with this version, please share your sample file with us so that we can log a separate ticket dedicated to your file and share the ID with you.

Dear @asad.ali, thanks for your suggestion - we are doing tests now with newest version and seems that it solves the issue - great! I believe we can close this ticket as resolved.

@Piotr875

It is nice to hear that your issue has been resolved. Please keep using our API and feel free to create a new topic in case you need further assistance.

Hello Asad!

Strange thing but we are now using again the feature of PDF to PDF/A conversion and we have issues with approximately 60% of our documents. The error logs are different but I can paste here few examples:

    "conversionLog": "<Compliance Name=\"Log\" Operation=\"Validation\" Target=\"PDF/A-1B\"><Version>1.0</Version><Copyright>Copyright (c) 2001-2022 Aspose Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.</Copyright><Date>11/7/2022 7:57:10 AM</Date><File Version=\"1.4\" Name=\"Example5_QR-bill_2-apge_W-left.pdf\" Pages=\"2\"><Security /><Catalog /><Header /><Annotations /><Fonts><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.5\" ObjectID=\"4\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"True\">CIDSet is missing or incomplete for font 'AAAAAA+Lato-Light'</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.5\" ObjectID=\"9\" Page=\"2\" Convertable=\"True\">CIDSet is missing or incomplete for font 'BAAAAA+LiberationSans-Bold'</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.5\" ObjectID=\"10\" Page=\"2\" Convertable=\"True\">CIDSet is missing or incomplete for font 'CAAAAA+LiberationSans'</Problem></Fonts><trailer><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.1.3\" Convertable=\"True\">The trailErrorIncorectSymbolicFontEncodinger dictionary does not contain 'ID'</Problem></trailer><Metadata><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.7.2\" Convertable=\"True\">Metadata key does not exists</Problem></Metadata><objects /><xObjects /><actions /><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.4\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"True\">ExtGState 'ca' value shall be 1.0</Problem></File></Compliance>",
    "validationLog": "<Compliance Name=\"Log\" Operation=\"Validation\" Target=\"PDF/A-1B\"><Version>1.0</Version><Copyright>Copyright (c) 2001-2022 Aspose Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.</Copyright><Date>11/7/2022 7:57:11 AM</Date><File Version=\"1.4\" Name=\"Example5_QR-bill_2-apge_W-left.pdf\" Pages=\"2\"><Security /><Catalog /><Header /><Fonts /><trailer /><Metadata><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.7.3\" Convertable=\"True\">Document information entry 'Creator' not synchronized with metadata property 'xmp:CreatorTool'</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.7.3\" Convertable=\"True\">Document information entry 'Producer' not synchronized with metadata property 'pdf:Producer'</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.7.3\" Convertable=\"True\">Document information entry 'CreationDate' not synchronized with metadata property 'xmp:CreateDate'</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.7.3\" Convertable=\"True\">Document information entry 'ModDate' not synchronized with metadata property 'xmp:ModifyDate'</Problem></Metadata><objects /><xObjects /><actions /></File></Compliance>"

and another one:

"conversionLog": "<Compliance Name=\"Log\" Operation=\"Validation\" Target=\"PDF/A-1B\"><Version>1.0</Version><Copyright>Copyright (c) 2001-2022 Aspose Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.</Copyright><Date>11/7/2022 7:48:17 AM</Date><File Version=\"1.7\" Name=\"3 pages.pdf\" Pages=\"3\"><Security /><Catalog /><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.4\" ObjectID=\"3\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"True\">The transparency is prohibited ('Group' key)</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.4\" ObjectID=\"28\" Page=\"2\" Convertable=\"True\">The transparency is prohibited ('Group' key)</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.4\" ObjectID=\"31\" Page=\"3\" Convertable=\"True\">The transparency is prohibited ('Group' key)</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"Annex\" ObjectID=\"42\" Convertable=\"True\">Object is compressed</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"Annex\" Convertable=\"True\">The xref stream is prohibited</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.4\" Page=\"0\" Convertable=\"True\">The transparency is prohibited ('Group' key)</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.4\" Page=\"2\" Convertable=\"True\">The transparency is prohibited ('Group' key)</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.4\" Page=\"3\" Convertable=\"True\">The transparency is prohibited ('Group' key)</Problem><Header /><Annotations /><Fonts><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" Convertable=\"False\">Font 'ArialMT' is not embedded</Problem><Problem Severity=\"Error\" Clause=\"6.3.4\" ObjectID=\"8\" Page=\"1\" (...)"

Would it be possible to solve those issues? Or give us an advice if we need to somehow pre-process those files before the conversion? I cannot send those files as they contain confidential data…

Kind regards,
Piotr

@Piotr875

We are afraid that we are unable to comment further without replicating this issue in our environment. The conversion log is not enough to determine the cause of the issue. We would like to share with you that your files are safe with us. We do not share your files with anyone and erase them from our system once the issue is resolved. Please check the image to send a private message and attach your files into it so that we can further proceed to assist you accordingly.

image.png (18.8 KB)

@Piotr875

We have received your files in the private message. Can you please share which utility are you using to verify the PDF/A conformance? Can you please share screenshot of the conformance results you are noticing at your end? This would help us in investigating the issue.

@Piotr875

Another ticket as PDFJAVA-42237 has been logged in our issue tracking system for your case. We will perform investigation against it and let you know once we have some updates about ticket resolution.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Hello! Sorry for late reply…

The utilty:
public static void convertPdfToPdfA(Document pdfDocument, String filePath) {
pdfDocument.convert(addPostfixToFileName(filePath, “_log”, “.xml”), PdfFormat.PDF_A_1B, ConvertErrorAction.Delete);
}

public static boolean validatePdf(Document pdfDocument, String filePath) {
    return pdfDocument.validate(addPostfixToFileName(filePath, "_validation-result", ".xml"), PdfFormat.PDF_A_1B);
}

When it comes to “conformance results” I think it might be only the logs that we obtan from the method for conversion so the ones sent at the top of this ticket thread?

@Piotr875

In case you have Adobe Preflight. You can please try to validate conformance of any PDF/A output generated by the Aspose.PDF and see what compliance errors it shows. You can take a screenshot of that result and share with us.

Hello!
I don’t have Adobe Preflight but I’ve checked it in the online tool https://avepdf.com/pdfa-validation and it says that the file that was converted is not valid (we’ve run the document.convert() method and felt the remaining file on the disc from where I’ve uploaded it to the online tool). Actually the result is the same like before the conversion…(e.g. when I upload the file that was not converted). The webpage says that they are not compliant to PDF/A-1a too if I try.
Can you please help us with this conversions? % of converted files is quite low…
image.png (39.4 KB)

@Piotr875

All of your concerns and information shared by you has been logged and recorded with the attached ticket. We will definitely look into details of this matter and let you know as soon as the ticket is resolved. Please be patient and spare us some time.

We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Dears,

I’m sorry for this but we’ve just discovered a bug in our code which caused the issue…it seems it was not caused by Aspose…once again sorry for the confusion there…

Kind regards,
Piotr

@Piotr875

Thanks for your feedback. In the event of any further query, please feel free to create a new topic.