Scarlet pdf manual is write protected - cannot highlight important parts!

[Les C.]

The pdf manual is SECURED.

This means that you can't highlight something very important in hot pink like what is NOT hot swappable, or highlight things of lesser importance in yellow (just as you would if you were reading a hard copy manual).

You also can't add bookmarks to create your own bookmark section of very important or often referred to pages.

Or - add your own comments to a page.

I think this is rather crazy. Does RED think that someone is going to download a RED manual from an ARRI web site?

That's not going to happen. No one with a 20-40 thousand dollar camera is going to download a manual or firmware update from any place but RED.

There's really no point in having it secured at all.

I just saw a thread where someone didn't realize a part on their camera wasn't hot swappable, so ... this would help RED users - and probably save RED some money for needless returns due to improper usage.

I want to take my manual, read it carefully once and highlight the very important parts like that.

I thought about creating a humorous dummy pdf that was secured and used the 'Demian Hurst' author tag, just to show how easy that would be if someone wanted to create their own secured official RED pdf, but .... hopefully the 'powers that be' will allow us to highlight our pdfs?

If you feel the same way, maybe drop a line to OpsGuides@red.com?

BTW - any of the free readers can highlight text in different colors.

Thanks!

 

[Luc Bouvrette]

Unlock it then. There's a bunch of tools you can download to do so. Had to unlock a pdf form recently so I could fill it in. Google it.

 

[Les C.]

Unlock it then. There's a bunch of tools you can download to do so. Had to unlock a pdf form recently so I could fill it in. Google it.

To 'unlock it', you have to download cracking software from a suspect cracking vendor that is not free that will probably infect your computer (assuming it can unlock it at all). Not a good idea.

This should not be locked to begin with.

 

[Luc Bouvrette]

To 'unlock it', you have to download cracking software from a suspect cracking vendor that is not free that will probably infect your computer (assuming it can unlock it at all).

Oh you mean from the klingon porn sharing site. No, that one's no good.


The one I used was legit from a legit mac dev and worked perfectly fine. Seems like we don't hang out in the same corners of the intrawebs.

 

[Trevor Meeks]

Preview in Mac OSX does this very easily... I was able to highlight with no problem after duplicating the PDF when prompted.

 

[Les C.]

Oh you mean from the klingon porn sharing site. No, that one's no good.


The one I used was legit from a legit mac dev and worked perfectly fine. Seems like we don't hang out in the same corners of the intrawebs.

Which developer?

In reality, every time you install software, you are trusting that developer to have never gotten infected themselves. How many software tools have they downloaded? Have they been religious about updates, disabled flash when zero day vulnerabilities have been found?

And if you were infected, how would you know?

It's not script kiddies anymore, it's very sophisticated criminals who wait for you to access your banks, and then cleverly hide the fact that your bank has been cleaned out. You would not see any observable signs that you've been infected.

And definitely on Macs also (I own a MacPro but develop Windows software and focus quite a bit of my time on security issues).

I don't mean to sound rude (I know I sounded rather harsh, but security is one of my hot buttons, if you couldn't guess?), but ... the reality is that most non-security people just don't have a clue as to how bad it is security-wise.

They think if they have Norton installed (who just admitted to having their source code stolen by hackers) that they are safe.

RSA was hacked - which provides security for the government and most larger corporations (such as banks), etc.

And OSX is very bad about patching known vulnerabilities - Apple is very good at promoting a false sense of security.

So ... I'm very hesitant to install un-necessary software.

Preview in Mac OSX does this very easily... I was able to highlight with no problem after duplicating the PDF when prompted.

Wow - thanks! I just made a copy on my Mac Pro - it seems Apple doesn't respect the security of the pdf (which it should) - which reinforces what I said earlier in this msg.

But - for Windows users - I still think RED should un-protect the pdf's. It is obviously of no benefit (if it's cracked that easily).

 

[Luc Bouvrette]

So ... I'm very hesitant to install un-necessary software.

Suit yourself. The one I'm talking about was reviewed by macworld, cnet or revision3, I don't remember which. But it worked fine. As I said earlier, shop around, google it.

 

[Cody Cha]

I don't mean to sound rude (I know I sounded rather harsh, but security is one of my hot buttons, if you couldn't guess?), but ... the reality is that most non-security people just don't have a clue as to how bad it is security-wise.

I still think RED should un-protect the pdf's. It is obviously of no benefit (if it's cracked that easily).

Ain't it ironic that a "security expert" like yourself is demanding that RED lower their security standards.

 

[Les C.]

Suit yourself. The one I'm talking about was reviewed by macworld, cnet or revision3, I don't remember which. But it worked fine. As I said earlier, shop around, google it.

Anytime you install new software, it's a risk. Anyway, I've said what I wanted to say on this topic and didn't intent for this to turn into a security lesson.

Thanks for your suggestion of the cracking software, and I'm glad that worked for you.

Ain't it ironic that a "security expert" like yourself is demanding that RED lower their security standards.

You are conflating security and 'ease of use'.

There's zero 'security' advantage to password protecting a pdf - when anyone can create one themselves that would look identical.

It provides a false sense of security - and reduced ease of use.

 

[Cody Cha]

You are conflating security and 'ease of use'.

There's zero 'security' advantage to password protecting a pdf - when anyone can create one themselves that would look identical.

It provides a false sense of security - and reduced ease of use.

Any type of security can be bypassed or cracked with time and means. That doesn't you ignore security altogether.

The proper way to ask is to have them enable commenting, not get rid of password protection. It's there for a reason, which is more important than your desire to use hot pink highlighter.

 

[Les C.]

Any type of security can be bypassed or cracked with time and means. That doesn't you ignore security altogether.

The proper way to ask is to have them enable commenting, not get rid of password protection. It's there for a reason, which is more important than your desire to use hot pink highlighter.

Ok my friend, please tell me what the 'reason' is?

 

[Rafael Grasse]

http://pdfkey.com/
No need to "crack" anything. These kinds of tools just print the document to a new one.
As long as you can print a document, you can unlock it easily.

 

[Trevor Meeks]

http://pdfkey.com/
No need to "crack" anything. These kinds of tools just print the document to a new one.
As long as you can print a document, you can unlock it easily.

OSX Has had this built in for a long time... Print to PDF in the print dialogue box. I use it all the time, quite useful

 

[Les C.]

OSX Has had this built in for a long time... Print to PDF in the print dialogue box. I use it all the time, quite useful

I think you would lose the bookmarks of the pdf that way - and most likely would also with that pdfkey 3rd party solution.

In OSX, as you kindly suggested earlier, you can just open the password protected manual and save it - and then open that on a PC.

Frankly, I was amazed at that. You learn something new every day!!!

 

[Rafael Grasse]

Bookmarks are not lost, its all there with PDFkey.

 

[Les C.]

Bookmarks are not lost, its all there with PDFkey.

That's useful to know.

For any the Mac won't open, I'll have to find a PC utility that does the same as I'm way too paranoid to install that on the Mac.

I always run 3rd party PC routines like that in a virtual machine, which is one thing I miss on OSX (you can run Windows in a virtual machine on OSX, but not OSX itslef - although, I may be wrong about that also - haven't looked in quite a while)