PDF417 Barcode

Although it relies on an app with a PDF417 barcode SDK, you can read a PDF417 barcode using any camera-enabled device. Scandit barcode and ID scanning supports scanning PDF417 barcodes on iOS and Android platforms.

PDF417 codes are suited to various applications, including:

• In the airline and transportation industry on boarding passes and tickets.
• In logistics to store shipping information, tracking numbers, and recipient details on postal packages.
• By governments for state-issued identification cards and driver’s licenses.
• In retail to track and manage stock inventory.
• In healthcare on patient identification bracelets to store medical records.
• In document management, meta-information is stored to index or authenticate documentation.

PDF417 barcodes store information on driver’s licenses. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) has created design standards for these documents and the information they contain. Data encoded on the back of an AAMVA license includes personal data that can be decoded using a barcode scanner, but a parser is needed to allow the software to query the data and humans to read it.

Scandit ID scanning software turns any consumer or employee smartphone into a high-performance scanning device capable of scanning and parsing the PDF147 barcodes on the back of identity documents such as ID cards and driver’s licenses and detecting fakes.

Scandit ID scanning extracts data from identity documents, converts it into digital characters and then into a readable/queryable data format using built-in and fully maintained parsing technology. It can decode 200+ different versions of ID standards across all US states and jurisdictions, including all IDs issued by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AMVAA).

PDF417 barcodes can hold up to 1.1 kilobytes of machine-readable data, making them suitable for applications requiring the decoding of large amounts of information.

PDF417 barcodes have a high data capacity and the data is stored directly within the barcode. They support all ASCII characters (value 0-127) and can encode up to 1850 alphanumeric characters, 2710 numerical characters and 1108 bytes of information.

PDF417 barcodes also have built-in error correction, which enables data recovery even if the barcode is damaged or obscured. Because of their high data and complex data capacity, they are suitable for secure applications such as ID cards and driver’s licenses.

Despite their versatility, PDF417 barcodes do have some limitations. Not all barcode scanners can read PDF417 – you may require enterprise-grade scanning software, such as the Scandit SDK.

Unless your software has high-performance decoding, scanning may also take longer simply due to the amount of data a PDF417 barcode can store. Also, high-resolution printers are often required to print clear, readable PDF417 barcodes.

Scandit’s solutions can decode PDF417 barcodes in 1 second or less and are performant even when codes are damaged or lower resolution.

Each PDF417 barcode can have between 3 and 90 rows, between 1 and 30 columns, up to 925 data codewords, and between 2 and 512 error correction codewords.

The minimum acceptable X-dimension for a PDF417 barcode is 9.5 millimeters, or 0.0095” (0.241 mm). The height of the bars must be 3x the X-dimension. For a 9.5 millimeter barcode, the bar height must be 28.5 mils.

A PDF417 is a 2D barcode with several linear rows of stacked codewords and can be read from left to right in linear order with a simple linear scan. A QR code is a 2D matrix barcode and requires a 2D imaging scanning device to read it. QR codes have a larger data capacity than PDF417 barcodes and can encode Kanji characters.

What are the different versions of the PDF417 barcode?

PDF417 is standard but has variants:

• The Micro PDF147 is a shortened version of the PDF417 barcode that can encode 150 characters. It is ideal when space is limited and a standard PDF147 would be too large.
• The Truncated (or Compact) PDF417, as its name suggests, is a compact version of a standard PDF417 barcode with a storage capacity of 1500 alphanumeric characters, compared to the standard’s 1850 characters.