Fast PDF printer software to print 2 pages per sheet

Question

I'd like to print a PDF (260 pages) in a new PDF with 2 pages per sheet (130 pages). My OS: Win 8.1.

Before I've used https://online2pdf.com/de/ and PDF24 Creator, but it takes 5 min for approximately 10 pages to convert.

Do you know a very very fast PDF printer alternative (freeware, without markup preferred)?

Answer 1

Foxit PDF Reader is, in my experience, a faster and more lightweight solution than Adobe's suite for managing PDF files.

Installing the free Foxit PDF Reader also, by default, installs the Foxit Reader PDF Printer, which can save any printable output to a PDF file -- including output from the Foxit Reader itself. You can use this to create a 130 page PDF, as follows:

1. Open your document in Foxit Reader
2. Press Control-P to bring up the print document dialog.
3. Under the "Name:" field, choose "Foxit Reader PDF Printer" as the printer.
4. Optional: Click the "Properties" button to configure the printer's options to do tweaks to speed up the generation of the resultant PDF, at the cost of quality.
   1. Choose "Standard" under the Default Settings, and click the "Edit" button.
   2. Modify all "Downsampling" options to "Average Downsampling."
   3. Click "OK." Foxit will prompt you to save the settings, name it something like "Fast and Low Quality."
   4. Under Image Resolution: choose "144".
   5. Click OK.
5. Optional: to remove any markups (annotations) that you have made (as described in your requirements), select "Document" under the Print what: drop down box. The default is to print "Document and markups."
6. Under the Print Handling section, press the "Multiple Pages Per Sheet" button. Immediately below that, select 2 pages per sheet.
7. Make sure that "Auto-rotate" and "Auto-center" are both checked to ensure that the pages are rendered properly.
8. Click OK. Foxit Reader PDF Printer will prompt you to specify where you would like your new PDF file saved.

In my testing, I was able to reformat an image-heavy 400 page PDF into a 200 page PDF in 2 minutes on a 2.8GHz E7400 dual-core system. Quality suffers a bit. Disabling compression entirely increases quality and results in a seven-minute conversion time.