PDF annotations shift when MediaBox + Rotate differ

[two9seven-rad]

I’m copying Bluebeam markups (PDF annotations) from an original PDF to a revised PDF, matching pages by page/sheet label. This works only if the page coordinate systems match.

Example
Original page: MediaBox 1584×2448, /Rotate=270. Revised page: MediaBox 2448×1584, /Rotate=0. They look identical on screen, but copied annotations shift because annotation coordinates are defined in MediaBox space(I hink) and /Rotate is viewer-only.

Goal
Normalize the revised page before copying annotations:

1. rotate/transform the page content stream,
2. set MediaBox/CropBox to match original,
3. set /Rotate to match original,
4. copy /Annotation without modifying geometry.

Question
What’s the correct way to transform a page’s content stream so MediaBox + /Rotate changes don’t break annotation placement?

[stefan6419846]

Please provide more information, especially the code you use and corresponding example PDF files.

Have you tried moving the page rotation from the metadata to the actual content stream using page.transfer_rotation_to_content()?

[two9seven-rad]

I like the page.transfer_rotation_to_content() idea. I tried it on my end and it worked mostly. It did not rotate the annotations. If I could use this method to "normalize" all my sheets first, then I think copying annotations to new sheets would work. I've attached to two files I tested with here.

` from pathlib import Path
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

src = Path(r"C:\development\rotate\G101.pdf")
out = Path(r"C:\development\rotate\G101_transfer_baked.pdf")

reader = PdfReader(str(src))
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
if page.get('/Rotate'):
page.transfer_rotation_to_content()
writer.add_page(page)

with out.open('wb') as f:
writer.write(f)
`

G101.pdf
G101_transfer_baked.pdf

[stefan6419846]

This sounds like #2592.

By the way, it seems like your code is unnecessarily complex:

from pathlib import Path
from pypdf import PdfWriter

src = Path(r"C:\development\rotate\G101.pdf")
out = Path(r"C:\development\rotate\G101_transfer_baked.pdf")

writer = PdfWriter(clone_from=src)
for page in writer.pages:
    if page.rotation:
        page.transfer_rotation_to_content()

writer.write(out)