iBook video playback problem in ePub exported from Pages 09

An update from Apple is past due. When exporting to ePub from a Pages 4.2 document that contains multiple videos - only the first video plays (because it's the only video that's exported). This is completely unexceptable, considering it worked in 4.1 and there's no way to roll back to 4.1 after upgrading to 4.2.

Apple?

I can confirm that if you create a new Pages document and imbed video files and export to ePub - the video files will play as expected. But if you save the Pages document and export to ePub - only the first video is exported (even though the video markers seems to indicate that all the videos exported). If this has to do with the how OSX is handing the ability saves a current version while maintaining the ability to roll back to previous file versions than more than Pages is broken.

I Asked apple to update me on my problem report. I asked for an update but after they called and

I asked them to forward the question to someone in the team dealing with the problem, I did not receive a call or email.

Went into apple store in London today and was told that problem report

Appeared to be closed! I have asked for another call.

Come on Apple this is causing some of us a lot of delays getting books published.

Is it possible to insert the videos into the ePub directly using Sigil or similar?

I just tested again by adding 5 MOV files to a clean Pages document (over 200MB of video).

1. Open Pages
2. Select "Blank" template
3. Drag 5 videos to first page
4. Select Inline (not Floating)
5. Export to ePub
6. Success - the resulting file size is 96MB in size

However:

When I saved the document and exported to ePub it failed. Only the first movie plays.

When I saved, closed pages, reopened the docuement and exported to ePub it failed. Only the first movie plays.

When I saved, closed, reopened, duplicated and exported to exported to ePub it failed. Only the first movie plays.

Is it possible that saving the document is corrupting the file?

I'm sure I can find a copy of my book which used to work when exported to ePub with Pages 4.1, which has never been saved by the new version of pages. Certainly i have files like this on my time machine backup. However my MAC died yesterday and is being repaired, so it might take a few days before I can check this.

My belief is that this problem surfaced when I took a file, I had never saved with the new version of Pages, opened it and exported it to ePub. This then produced the problem. if my memory is correct andnit prodcued the problem without saving it, it would not support your theory about corruption happening during the save.

If you take the saved file, remove the videos, put them back in again and export it without saving, does the problem still occur? If not it would give me a way forward.

Still no resolution on my project, just wanted to chime in about the process I used to try to get it to work based on some of the postings here.

1. I first experienced this original issue when exporting, i.e. the reason we are all here (video content from first video playing in the place of all additional videos) from a saved Pages file with text and video embedded throughout (meaning, videos aren't in separate chapters, they are interspersed throughout the book, inline). In other words, the same thing that has been affecting all of you based on your descriptions also is how it played out for me. This was after a recent software update of Pages '09

2. I tried a recommendation from this thread and moved everything to a new document, without saving. Re-exported, still doesn't work correctly. What I did specifically was to first delete all the videos out of my saved file, then I copied and pasted all the remaining text into a new/blank document, then I dragged all new instances of videos (inline) into this new file. Did not save it, exported, still failed. Maybe I didn't exactly replicate what the recommendation was, I'm not sure why it didn't work.

As I posted in an earlier post, I decided to move forward using ibooks author (I hired a freelancer for pretty cheap) and that has been a cool experience. I'm still hoping for a fix for this for future projects, though.

I decided to convert everthing to iBooks format via iBooks Author as well - and exporting was successful.

Unfortunately the books you create in iBook Author are only viewable on the iPad - not the iPhone: https://www.macworld.com/article/1164895/hands_on_ibooks_author_effortless_to_us e_but_ipad_only.html

An ePub exported from Pages will sync with all iOS devices. Another frustrating and seemingly random decision by Apple. And of course you may not sell your iBook without going through Apple as it's "free" and not available for purchase.

So the purchased tool (Pages) is broken while the free tool (IBook Author) doesn't work.

I already have the book in iBooks Author, i published it for free and asked for donations for charity, but despite getting downloads, I got no donations, so to increase the number of potential customers, I decided to make it available on the iPhone. Hence the need to convert to ePub format. Hopefully in due course this should also be easier to convert for the kindle Fire.

I know it's not for my eyesight to strain looking at the iPhone, but surely Apple, this should be my choice.

I can confirm what BGBetz says above. It's important to get the format correct. I also tried 480p and that just caused Pages to crash when trying to export. At least I have a way to export my book and publish it now. :-)

I still think the problem is there in Pages 4.3. Would anyone else like t confirm that?

Just to say I'm having exactly the same problem too. Has anyone had any success? When is apple going to update pages?

I have been learning to use Pages 09 Version 4.3 for producing ePub eBooks with the same and additional problems.

I found that if I sequentially go to menu and insert/choose 1^st a video .m4v file, 2^nd another video .m4v file and 3^rd an audio .m4a file, DO NOT SAVE THE .PAGES DOCUMENT and go to menu and export ePub, I get an ePub that functions OK in iBooks. When I checked this file with epubcheck-3.0 (https://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/downloads/detail?name=epubcheck-3.0.zip) , I get messages that it is "Validating against EPUB version 2.0" and 'element "video" not allowed anywhere' and 'element "audio" not allowed anywhere' This is all fine as when I opened the ePub in Sigil (http://code.google.com/p/sigil/) and checked the content.opf, the <package… version="2.0">. So Pages 09 produces "enhanced" ePub 2.0 eBooks (video and audio weren't specified in version 2.0).

However, if I save the same .pages file and go to menu and export ePub, I get an ePub that displays and plays the 1^st video correctly, the 2^nd video displays the correct poster but plays the 1^st video and the 3^rd file plays the audio of the first file. When I unzip this ePub with ePub zip-unzip 2.0.1 (http://code.google.com/p/epub-applescripts/downloads/list) and look in the media folder, the 1^st video file is there but the 2^nd video file and the audio file are not there! So the export to ePub is corrupted by saving the .pages document (though the video and audio files superficially seem to still reside in the pages document). This defect is reproducible.

There are other problems, for example if I do not save the .pages file but do significant editing and revising, for example insert and then delete audio or video files or even just text sometimes (quite variable and unreliable), and then export, the ePub is corrupted.

So, it appears to me that Pages 09 version 4.3 is not able to reliably produce ePub eBooks containing audio or video files. Does anyone disagree? Does anyone have a solution to this problem?