Quicktime movies embedded in pdf files

Question

Level 1

8 points

Quicktime movies embedded in pdf files

Hi,

I'm trying to embed a quicktime movie in a pdf file and play it with Acrobat Reader. I have an old Quicktime movie, encoded in Sorenson, for which everything works fine.

The movie I now want to use, however, is being rejected by Acrobat Reader ("The type of file you have selected is not supported. Please select another file."), no matter what compression I use (Sorenson, none, ...). The only way it works is to export the movie as (a huge) AVI. I've tried dozens of different settings for MOV movies, and everything is being rejected by Acrobat Reader.

Anyone has experience with this kind of embedding? Do you know what codec to use (I know I need to avoid MPEG)? Any idea how to generate a compatible movie?

Thanks,

MC

iMac G5 / MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8) Acrobat Reader 7.08

Posted on Oct 10, 2006 4:03 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 10, 2006 11:02 PM in response to CharpoV

It's just a mpeg-4 video. The movies is embeded into the pfd. The video and pdf are one document. There are many formats you can place into a pdf, even Flash.

Open the pdf in Pro Acrobat:
Menu-->Tools-->Advance Editing-->Movie Tool

double click on the movie in the pdf. This should bring up a window called, Multimedia Properties. You will see the settings I used.

To place new movie in the pdf:
First place a poster frame in you movie to be used later.
Menu-->Tools-->Advance Editing-->Movie Tool
Draw a box in the pdf with this tool. Doesn't matter how big it is.
An Add Movie Box will pop up.
Select new content's compatibility media, check mark Acrobat 6...mpeg-4 won't work in an Arobat 5 setting.
Location Choose (choose file)...find your movie...Select...
Back in the Add Movie window, Content type...pick one, there many. Video-mp4
Then check Retrieve poster from movie...
Click OK.............
This will embed the movie into the pdf.
With the Movie Tool Double click on the movie.
This will bring up the Multimedia Properties Window again, here you fine tune your settings...
Settings Tab:
Here you can set how the movie plays; Mouse up, Mouse down, Page enter, Page focus, blah blah blah...All so at the bottom there an Edit Rendition Tab...Click on that and you can edit playback settings and a bunch of other stuff too.
Appearance Tab:
Boarder, Edit Poster Frame...blah
Action Tab:
Set Trigger, Mouse up...Blah blah
Set Action, Execute Menu Item, Run Javascript, Open Web Link...Blah..blah

Don't do a "Save"
Do a "Save As" This will flatten the pfd just like Quicktime does...

There a zillion things you can do with a pdf that will blow you away.

You know if you click on Help in the menu and pick "Complete Acrobat Help." Type in movie. It will tell you how to do all of this.

Wonder if h.264 will work...

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Answer 2

Oct 10, 2006 5:10 PM in response to CharpoV

The only way I have embeded a Qt movie into a pdf is with Acobat Porfessional. This Acobat Professional reader/editor usally comes with Acrobat Distiller. This reader/editor is not the same as the free reader.

Here is a short movie I put in a pdf...

http://praiseavenue.com/movieinpdf.zip

Cilck on the poster frame

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Answer 3

CharpoV Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 10, 2006 7:40 PM in response to David M Brewer

Maybe 'embed' was the wrong term. If the video file has to remain independent from the pdf file, that's fine. All I care about is that Acrobat is able to play the movie. I do have Acrobat Pro, but the problem is not there (I generate the pdf from scratch, using some other tool). My question is about the encoding / compression of the video so that Acrobat (reader or Pro) can play it. Could you please post the movie you used, by itself (or explain how I can extract it from the pdf file using Acrobat Pro). I'd like to see what its video format is. Thanks,

MC

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Answer 4

CharpoV Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 12, 2006 7:55 PM in response to David M Brewer

I suspect the tool I use to generate pdfs is doing something fishy (like having the wrong mime type for the movie or something like that). If I edit the pdf document with Acrobat to replace the movie afterwards, I can use any Quicktime supported video format, and everything works fine.

Thanks a lot for your help,

MC

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Answer 5

Oct 11, 2006 5:58 AM in response to David M Brewer

H.264 does work...The file is 1MB. If I had used the mpeg-4 video it would have been 22MB....

http://praiseavenue.com/h264Apdf.zip

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Answer 6

Oct 12, 2006 8:00 PM in response to CharpoV

What tool are you using?

I just printed to a pdf from Textedit to make those pdf.

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