Getting Started With HVD Using the Harlequin Core

HVD is the Harlequin Core's solution for processing Variable Data jobs at higher speed. Elements of each page that are static should only need to be ripped once and then re-composed with the variable data when printing. Full details on using HVD can be found in the Harlequin Extensions Manual and the Harlequin API Reference Manual

The easiest way to test out the HVD functionality with Harlequin Core is to use the supplied Page Features with the clrip executable.

Eg: clrip -c CMYKComposite300dpi -F HVDInternal "..\samples\GGS_100pp_1_3x3_Mixed.pdf"

In the directory \SW\Page Features\ are four example Page Feature files that can be used as is with clrip or edited to test out different elements of HVD functionality. Both HVD internal and HVD external require licenses. Using HVD internal allows full pages to be output by the RIP whereas HVD External delivers individual rasters for external compositors to reassemble.  

HVDDemo - Delivers TIFFs for each raster element

This example page feature demonstrates how Harlequin VariData in external mode splits a job into sub-page rasters. Each raster element
identified by the HVD scanner is output exactly once. Used in conjunction with a raster back end which does not attempt to 
reassemble final output pages from these elements (such as TIFF) this emulates the entire RIP output for a given job assuming that no 
purges of the raster cache take place (in which case purged elements would be re-output as necessary).

HVDInternal - Delivers TIFFs for each page

This example page feature demonstrates how Harlequin VariData in internal mode can accelerate a variable data print job.
iHVD is enabled in automatic mode, which means it will be triggered for any jobs that are marked as PDF/VT, or which were created by
known variable data composition engines. You may need to set /EnableOptimizedPDFScan Always to get your job to scan and then re-use.

HVDNone - Delivers no output but can be used for testing speed and recognition of variable data
 This example page feature may be used with any contone TestConfig. It switches to use the HVDNone raster back end.
 The HVDNone raster back end follows all of the eHVD API for communication with the RIP about sub-page rasters, but then
 discards the raster data delivered to it. It is therefore useful for testing the speed of the RIP when performing eHVD, without
 any influences from down-stream, post-RIP processing.

HVDRaw - Delivers raw raster files and an xml file showing their usage
 This example page feature may be used with any contone TestConfig. It switches to use the HVDRAW raster back end, which saves all of
 the rasters delivered by the RIP to disk as raw raster files. It also delivers an XML file containing the page and element info.