Split each PDF page in two?

Question

I have a large number of PDF files which have two slides to a page (for printing).

The format is A4 pages each with two slides setup like so:

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Answer 1

Here is how I did it with pdfrw:

import sys, os, pdfrw
writer = pdfrw.PdfWriter()
for page in pdfrw.PdfReader('input.pdf').pages:
    for y in [0, 0.5]:
        newpage = pdfrw.PageMerge()    
        newpage.add(page, viewrect=(0, y, 1, 0.5))
        writer.addpages([newpage.render()])
writer.write('output.pdf')

Short and working!

If you want it rotated (example: input A4 portrait, output 2 A5 portrait and not landscape):

import sys, os, pdfrw
writer = pdfrw.PdfWriter()
for page in pdfrw.PdfReader('input.pdf').pages:
    for y in [0, 0.5]:
        newpage = pdfrw.PageMerge()    
        newpage.add(page, viewrect=(0, y, 1, 0.5))
        p = newpage.render()
        p.Rotate = 270
        writer.addpages([p])
writer.write('output.pdf')