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Placing videos into PDF using web URL instead of local file?

Community Beginner ,
Dec 10, 2015 Dec 10, 2015

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I have used Adobe Chat Support twice but no one knew the answer or how to do this. It is getting pretty frustrating.

I have the latest Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and I want to place videos into my PDF document. Local video files work fine, but I need to insert a lot of videos, meaning the PDF file size will get pretty large, and I don't want that. Instead, I want to be able to use a web URL to reference the video and have that video appear in my document.

I have checked out these resources:

Acrobat Help | Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs

Acrobat Help | Adding multimedia to PDFs

... along with a lot of forums and web, but no working answers have been found.

What I want:

Video playing inside the document, referenced from a web URL, looking like below:

sample1.png

I tried:

Rich Media > Add Video, but this error appears

I tried youtube, vimeo, dropbox .mp4 links but nothing works.

I tried embed codes from youtube but Acrobat says it doesn't recognize <iframe> code.

Capture1.PNG

On the Adobe website I posted, this is what Adobe said:

"Adding video, sound, and interactive content transforms PDFs into multidimensional communication tools that increase interest and engagement in your documents."

"Another way to add multimedia is by entering a URL that refers to a video file or streaming media. Three types of URLs can be used: RTMP, HTTP, and HTTPS. On HTTP and HTTPS servers, H.264-compliant MOV and MP4 files are supported."

My question:

Can what I want be done? And HOW?

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Rich media and 3D

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Engaged , Dec 10, 2015 Dec 10, 2015

You need to link directly to the video file with a fully qualified URl. You can't use services like YouTube or Vimeo which obfuscate the URL to the actual video.

Try the URL below.

https://archive.org/download/CEP318/CEP318_512kb.mp4

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Engaged ,
Dec 10, 2015 Dec 10, 2015

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You need to link directly to the video file with a fully qualified URl. You can't use services like YouTube or Vimeo which obfuscate the URL to the actual video.

Try the URL below.

https://archive.org/download/CEP318/CEP318_512kb.mp4

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 11, 2015 Dec 11, 2015

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Wow. You are awesome. I am able to incorporate the video now. So glad to finally get a conclusive answer to so many hours of searching.

For the next step, do you know some good sites to upload videos so that it directly points to the video (with a .mp4 ending)? I've tried the standard google drive, Sharepoint, and dropbox. For some of those, even though I was able to get an .mp4 link, the video just keeps loading and doesn't play in the PDF.

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Engaged ,
Dec 11, 2015 Dec 11, 2015

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You're not going to be able to use those services because you need to add parameters at the end of the URLs to disable their built in viewers and get to the raw file. Acrobat doesn't like these parameters. You'll need to find a place to host the file where you can link directly to it.

You might try WordPress or something like that.

J-

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 14, 2015 Dec 14, 2015

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Interesting. I haven't considered Wordpress. I was looking for more of a hosting site that allows direct linking with file extension at the end of the link.

Anyway, thanks so much for the help. Marked your answer as correct!

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New Here ,
Feb 09, 2017 Feb 09, 2017

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You seem to know your stuff, so I was hoping maybe you could help me too!  I followed your advice above, and I'm trying to embed a video into a pdf, but it looks like garbage and I can't figure out how to maintain aspect ratio when trying to re-size. 

Here is the direct url if that's helpful:  www.kbicresults.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/KBIC.mp4

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Community Expert ,
Feb 09, 2017 Feb 09, 2017

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The easiest way to get the right aspect ratio is to import the video as an embedded file. Don't click and drag the rectangle top place it though.  Double-click with the video tool and the tool will read the video and create a rectange with the right aspect ratio. Then resize it using the shift key and the corners and position it where you like. Next, show the rulers and drag some guides around the video so you know where to put the one you're going to create next. Delete the video. Now use the video tool to click and drag the rectangle to match the area you just created guides for. Use the URL for this video.... works every time.

J-

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New Here ,
Feb 09, 2017 Feb 09, 2017

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Sorry for the follow-up...I'm pretty new to this.  I had previously tried using the double-click function to place the video instead of dragging for the rectangle size, and the video it drops in is HUGE.  When I re-size that video, the aspect ratio gets all messed up.  Using the shift key while dragging corners seems to lock in a perfect square shape, not the original aspect ratio of the video.  Thoughts?

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Community Expert ,
Feb 09, 2017 Feb 09, 2017

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The fallback would be to get a still from the video as an image, copy it to the clipboard and paste that into the PDF. Scale it as you like, set your guides and then follow the rest of my instructions.

J-

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New Here ,
Feb 02, 2018 Feb 02, 2018

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Hello

I'm trying to create a link to a local video, but to a specific time (ex: 12'.35''). How can I do it in a pdf document.

Thank you.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 02, 2018 Feb 02, 2018

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You can't create a link that also sets the playhead to a specific time. However, you can seek to that time immediately after activating the video annotation. Assuming your video is the only one on the current page, your code might look like this...

var rma = this.getAnnotsRichMedia(this.pageNum)[0];

if (rma.activated) { rm.callAS("multimedia_seek", (12*60)+35); }

You are calling the multimedia_seek ActionScript method in the video player and passing in the number of seconds to seek to.

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New Here ,
Feb 05, 2018 Feb 05, 2018

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Thank you for your quick answer.

I'm not a expert user, so I don't know where to include your suggestions. Can you help me?

Best regards

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Community Expert ,
Feb 05, 2018 Feb 05, 2018

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Probably... Please elaborate on exactly what you want to have happen and how the user triggers it.

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New Here ,
Feb 08, 2018 Feb 08, 2018

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Thank you again.

I have to make reports in pdf with links to local video files. The problem is that there are several links to the same video in the same pdf report. Each time the reader opens the video, he has to forward to a specific time. It is a redundant task and to improve the report reading I would like to create a link to those specific times.

I hope you find this enough for you to understand my problem.

Best regards

Jorge

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Feb 13, 2018 Feb 13, 2018

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Wow this problem with linking to a YouTube video has been going on for a long time.  I reported the frustrating problem to Adobe support today and they estimated a fix might be out in a few months.  I hope they are correct.  I remember using the link to YouTube way back around 2007 to 2010 and it seemed to work fine back then.  I am surprised people started having troubles with YouTube links back at the end of 2010 and still no fix has happened yet for sites as popular as YouTube.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 13, 2018 Feb 13, 2018

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Hopefully, people will be able to read this far into the thread... probably not. But here goes.

Adobe CANNOT solve this problem given the current terms of use of the Google YouTube APIs and the usage throttles. It's not a technical issue. Why Adobe Support told you it'd be a few months I can't say. You can link to a YouTube video but you won't be able to embed it in a page. There was a time when you could get a direct link to a video via a URL but YouTube removed that feature... not Adobe.

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Feb 13, 2018 Feb 13, 2018

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Perhaps you can elaborate on exactly what terms of use on Google YouTube APIs and usage throttles are causing the legal problem.  Perhaps I am oversimplifying but if you use any one of several video downloaders then analyze and figure out the exact files in different resolutions and extensions like MP4 or WEBM and then allow a download.  This seems to be the problem that one video has potentially many different file names.  So it does seem like a technical problem to me not a legal one.  YouTube isn't revealing the exact file names but other vendors have figured out a way to solve this problem.

It appears as though Adobe is giving up to soon here.  Customer pay a lot of money for things to work.  Where its a legal problem or a technical problem Adobe should listen to customers and try harder after 17 years of this bug happening.  Partnerships can be made with Google and YouTube to solve this if its a legal problem.  Big companies like Adobe can afford attorneys and sale representatives to work on legal issues.  But I still kind of read your explanation years ago that YouTube is not making the full file name available and that seem like more of a technical problem that other more hard working software engineers at websites offering video downloads have figured out a solution for.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 13, 2018 Feb 13, 2018

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First, those tools violate the YouTube terms of service.

"Streaming" means a contemporaneous digital transmission of the material by YouTube via the Internet to a user operated Internet enabled device in such a manner that the data is intended for real-time viewing and not intended to be downloaded (either permanently or temporarily), copied, stored, or redistributed by the user.

Adobe, the size that it is, can't afford to violate those terms.

To "solve" the problem there are two potential solutions. You'll see why I put solve in scare quotes.

Create a custom YouTube player that leverages the YouTube API separate form the existing movie player. In that case, individual users would need to sign up with YouTube to get an API key and enter that into some sort of preference and then potentially incur usage fees if they exceeded their quota. That gets the video playing. I could probably live with that. Additionally the API key would need to be distributed in the PDF for it to work and then anyone with a PDF object level browser would be able to get at it even if it's encrypted in some manner. That's bad.

Another solution would be to create a video player that was essentially just an HTML window that lets you paste in a YouTube embed code just like any other HTML page. Again, that gets the video playing, there are no APIs used, no throttling, super easy to set up... but a crappy experience.

So... lets talk about the experience. I'll ignore the floating window option because that's not much different from just linking to YouTube. Currently, when a video is embedded on a page, the video will play in the space provided and the user can zoom in and out and the video will still play in the space provided. If you set up the annotation properly, the video fills the annotation. The size of the video playing is scaled with the page... just as you'd expect from a PDF.

If an HTML window were used, the video would have to play at the size for the actual pixel dimensions of the HTML window. It would play as though the browser window were that size. This would make the playing video completely unrelated to the zoom level of anything around it. That's not very PDF-like and pretty much exactly the opposite of what users that I've talked to want.

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New Here ,
Mar 27, 2018 Mar 27, 2018

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When we play a locally stored .MP4 as part of a presentation it runs fine but locks up Acrobat DC Pro at its conclusion and will not continue the presentation. We have to close Acrobat, then reopen it to the slide following the .MP4 before we can continue. Is there an error in the way we constructed the presentation?

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Community Expert ,
Mar 28, 2018 Mar 28, 2018

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Let me guess, you added the video in InDesign and then exported to PDF. Correct?

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New Here ,
Mar 28, 2018 Mar 28, 2018

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Adobe Acrobat Pro DC> Create PDF>Multiple Files: Combine Files

I added several current pdf files and the MP4 file in the middle of them. Selected combine files, then saved the result.

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Community Expert ,
Mar 29, 2018 Mar 29, 2018

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Hmmm... Can you post the PDF somewhere?

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New Here ,
Mar 29, 2018 Mar 29, 2018

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Hopefully you can get to this.

http://jmp.sh/pyPiB8A

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Community Expert ,
Mar 29, 2018 Mar 29, 2018

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You didn't mention it in your question but I'm guessing this only happens when you are in full screen mode... at least, that was the only way I could reproduce the problem. It's not actually locking up Acrobat. When you are on a regular page, the page up/down and/or arrow keys will advance the presentation page by page. However, when the page is entirely covered by the video and you click on the video to play it, the video annotation gets the input focus which means that any keyboard or mouse actions will apply to the active video annotation and not the document.

To advance to the next page, right click on the video and select "Disable Content". You can then advance the presentation normally.

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New Here ,
Mar 30, 2018 Mar 30, 2018

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Absolutely. Success and thank-you!

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