Darrell Kim

The default “Reduce File Size” option in OSX Preview often leaves you with undesirable results, pixellated images or unreadable text. If you’ve ever wished for the ability to control the quality/filesize balance, follow the instructions below:

1. Launch the ColorSync Utility in Applications > Utilities, and click on Filters.
2. Click on the Plus sign button at the bottom left to add a new custom Filter, I called mine “Reduce Filesize Mid-Quality.”
3. Click on the little triangle to the right of the filter to add an effect, select Image Effects > Image Compression.
   
4. Choose JPEG as the Mode, and drag the slider to select the quality level you want. When I experimented with different levels, I found that the Min setting actually yields a pretty good quality, and results in the smallest filesize.
   
5. Now in Preview, open the PDF you would like to shrink, go to File > Save As and select PDF as the Format and change the Quartz Filter to the one created above, and click on Save.
   
6. Enjoy your new smaller PDF!

The file I tested with shrank from 12.2 MB to 1.7 MB, so the difference is substantial.

How to embed Vimeo (and other flash) videos:
Note that this will not work for all flash video sites, it depends on how open the video site chooses to be.

1. Copy embed code from Vimeo, find URL to video within the embed code:

2. When writing new Post, click on Flash button (silver f, second from right) in toolbar:

3. Paste in URL from embed code:

4. Enter 400 for width, then 300 for height when prompted.

5. Publish your post and test.

6. Pau!

1. First upload the swf file, then send to editor, then click on the “Code tab” to get the full URL to the swf file. The full URL will start with http://… and end with .swf – Copy the full URL you will need it in the next step.

2. Click on  the silver “F” icon on the Visual text editor when writing a post

3. Paste the full URL to the swf file into the pop-up dialog box:

4. Enter 400 for width, then 300 for height when prompted. You can play with these numbers to see what works best if you are unsure of the file size.

5. Publish your post and test.

Getting the correct embed  code for TeacherTube is a little tricky, and may not always work, remember, you can always simply link to their website.

1. Copy the Embeddable w/ Video Search code:

2. Paste into a text editor so you can modify the code, you should see this:

3. Look for the highlighted code above and replace with ‘?flashvars=’ without quotes, the code you end up with should look like the example below:

4. Now to embed the video, when writting a post, click on Flash button (silver f, second from right) in toolbar:

5. Paste in the embed code from step 3 above:

6. Enter 400 for width, then 300 for height when prompted.
7. Publish your post and test.
8. Pau!

Note: Sometimes the TeacherTube embed code will not work after you save more than once. In this case, simply paste the modified code again into your post and save.