Question

When using this command on PDFs larger than about 600KB

<? passthru("convert -verbose -scale '200x200+0+0>' ".$pdf."[0] $image"); ?>

I get this error output:

ERROR: /rangecheck in resolveR
Operand stack:
   PageCount   4763294   47   46
Execution stack:
   %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
Dictionary stack:
   --dict:1129/1686(ro)(G)--   --dict:0/20(G)--   --dict:107/200(L)--   --dict:107/200(L)--   --dict:104/127(ro)(G)--   --dict:241/347(ro)(G)--   --dict:16/24(L)--
Current allocation mode is local

Anyone have a workaround for these larger files? I need to pull a page 1 thumbnail from some as large as 4 MB.

Per Kurt below I also tried accessing gs directly:

<?
    $image = "3.jpg";
    $pdf = '3/ABS_Survey_for_Load_Lines_CIB_100.pdf';
    if (!file_exists($image)) {
        echo passthru("gs \
-sOutputFile=$image \
-sDEVICE=jpeg \
-g200x200 \
-dPDFFitPage \
 $pdf");
    }
?>

This gives same error:

ESP Ghostscript 815.02 (2006-04-19)
Copyright (C) 2004 artofcode LLC, Benicia, CA.  All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
ERROR: /rangecheck in resolveR
Operand stack:
   PageCount   4763294   47   46
Execution stack:
   %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
Dictionary stack:
   --dict:1122/1686(ro)(G)--   --dict:0/20(G)--   --dict:107/200(L)--   --dict:107/200(L)--   --dict:104/127(ro)(G)--   --dict:241/347(ro)(G)--   --dict:16/24(L)--
Current allocation mode is local

Answer 1

Bad news! I was playing with an online converter using a problem PDF and it gave a “bad pdf” error. All of the PDFs will open in Acrobat mind you but- I took some of the problem ones and re-saved them using my Acrobat 9 and lo and behold the thumbnails got created no problem…

So the issue had to do with whatever software the shipyard used to make the PDFs.