We added a new Turbo mode for our 🤖 /document/thumbs Robot. It emits page thumbnails as soon as they are ready instead of batching them at the end, so downstream Steps can start work earlier. This can reduce end-to-end time for multi‑page PDFs by up to 10x, depending on your workflow.

What is Turbo Mode?

Turbo mode lets Transloadit parallelize or stream work so results become available earlier. We first introduced it for 🤖 /video/encode and 🤖 /video/concat — see our Turbo mode FAQ — and are now bringing similar benefits to document thumbnailing.

How it works for documents

With Turbo mode enabled — enabled by default for document thumbnails — the 🤖 /document/thumbs Robot emits a result for each page as soon as that page is processed. You can opt out per Step by setting turbo: false if you prefer batched results. That means:

  • Faster pipelines: subsequent Steps (for example, image post-processing or storing) can begin while later pages are still being rendered.
  • Much faster resizing: when you specify width and/or height, extracted pages are resized in parallel on remote machines rather than queued sequentially on a single machine (concurrency of 1). This adds dramatic speedup that scales linearly with the number of pages.
  • Predictable ordering: results are still sorted by page. You can also inspect meta.thumb_index to determine a page’s index.

This streaming behavior is especially useful for document viewers that need to show page previews as soon as possible, or pipelines where every second matters between ‘upload’ and ‘first usable preview’.

When to use it (and when not to)

  • Time-sensitive workflows: choose Turbo mode if you want the fastest possible time-to-first- preview, or if downstream work can run per page.
  • Cost-sensitive workflows: for some pricing scenarios, earlier per‑page emission can be treated similarly to handling multiple inputs. If your primary goal is minimizing cost, consider opting out by setting turbo: false. For details, see our pricing docs.

Why enabled by default: In our analysis of common setups, document thumbnails are small and inexpensive compared to video and other workloads. Enabling Turbo by default delivers meaningful latency gains while having a negligible impact on most invoices. If minimizing cost is your top priority, you can always opt out by setting turbo to false.

Example Assembly

Below is a minimal example that converts a multi‑page PDF into 600‑px wide page thumbnails and stores them with an index in the file path. Turbo mode is enabled by default; no additional parameter is needed. To opt out, set turbo: false. Keep an eye on meta.thumb_index for page‑aware filenames.

{
  "steps": {
    "thumbs": {
      "use": ":original",
      "robot": "/document/thumbs",
      "width": 600,
      "resize_strategy": "fit"
    },
    "store": {
      "use": "thumbs",
      "robot": "/s3/store",
      "path": "docs/${file.original_basename}/page-${meta.thumb_index}.${file.ext}"
    }
  }
}

Availability

Turbo mode for document thumbnails is available today and enabled by default. If you want to opt out account‑wide, please reach out to mailto:hello@transloadit.com and we will help you get set up.

Learn more and try it

Enjoy, and use responsibly!