Using BRISS and pdftk

BRISS

BRISS is a simple, free software that you can use to "cut up" a PDF file into pages with smaller parts as per your specifications.

Download BRISS from here https://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/ You would need Java installed on your computer to run BRISS.

One very useful kind of PDF file you can create is to cut up A3 landscape size pages to a set of A4 size portrait pages. This is quite useful when you want to have a magazine being opened animation effect when viewing the flaunt file. You can see this type of animation in action in the introduction to flaunt file whose link is in our home page.

Using Briss is a bit non-intuitive. When you load a PDF file, it will create a "overlay" of ALL the pages transparently one below the other and give you two such merged pages for you to work on. The top one is for the odd numbered pages and the bottom is for the even numbered pages (numbering as seen in your A3 size PDF)

Now you should draw out two rectangles for the odd-numbered pages in such a manner that they are shaped exactly as A4 size portrait pages placed next to each other. A4 size page is 210mmx297mm. Right click on the rectangle and you can select/unselect that drawn shape. Instead of placing those shapes by hand, I would suggest you use the menu to set the top-left origin of the selected shape exactly where you want. (The selection process is a bit confusing. Just remember that once a shape is selected, it will announce the size of that shape in dramatically large font)

When moving/resizing those shapes make sure you have only one shape selected -- else all the shapes would move around and it would be confusing.

Once you have exactly page 2 A4 size portrait pages on the odd-numbered pages, by placing 2 A4 size rectangles; then you select those 2 rectangles and copy and paste them to the even numbered pages.

Once those 4 shapes are done, you can use the Briss menu to cut up the file the way you specified it and it will create another PDF file now which contains all the A4 size pages.

pdftk

PDFTk is another powerful, free utility that you can download from here: https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/ This has a much more user friendly interface. I used PDFTk to remove the 1st A4 size page and the last A4 size page of the PDF I created using Briss for my flaunt files. That will give a nice attractive A4 cover page for my book and at the end, the presentation ends on the last cover A4 page. The inner pages all open out nicely one after another with a great animation.

There are lots of useful tutorials on pdftk on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/pdftk

Other utilities

There are many online and offline utilities for working with PDF. I am sure you will also have your own exprience on how you created PDF files for your flaunt files. Do share it with us!