A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a million. Video can convey more information faster than print or static imagery. It can make otherwise staid documents engaging. The rising popularity of YouTube, Facebook Video and Facebook Live, is testament to the appeal of video.
- Indesign Export Interactive Pdf Animation
- Export Interactive Pdf From Indesign
- Export Interactive Pdf Indesign Cc
Today InDesign can directly generate PDF files without the need for Distiller. Of course, Distiller is still available to convert PostScript files into PDFs, if necessary, but directly exporting PDF files is the recommended method of creating PDF files. It’s faster and easier to generate PDF files through direct export.
But when video is only part of your content – an explainer video in a marketing kit or press release, educational video in a step-by-step text guide – how do you deliver that? HTML web pages carrying video work in some circumstances, as do EPUB ebooks with video embedded. But many people overlook the most obvious mixed-media delivery format, one that is readable on 97 per cent of the world’s connected devices, a format so ubiquitous you probably already publish some of your company’s content to it. I’m speaking, of course, about PDF.
PDFs can contain embedded audio and video, image galleries, popup content, and so much more. Below I’m going to show you how simple it is to add video to an InDesign CC document and export it to Interactive PDF.
01. Make space for the video
My project is a PDF-format magazine layout. The article is about Ferrari supercars, cars that the magazine's readers will be thrilled by. Rather than load the article with mere static photographs, the editor has commissioned a video guaranteed to ramp up the excitement levels: footage of a Ferrari 360 zooming down a country road, filmed on a wheel-mounted camera.
This video will go in the large space on the bottom of page two, so you'll need to create an empty graphic frame in the area the video will occupy.
02. Prepare the video
If your video is not already an MPEG-4 with H.264 encoding, you’ll want to convert it to that. InDesign will work with QuickTime MOV movies, but MOV is an ageing, inefficient video format, so it's best to avoid this.
Converting common video formats to MPEG-4 is easy with the Adobe Media Encoder utility that comes packaged with Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and other Creative Cloud applications. Drag the video file into the large queue area of Adobe Media Encoder and choose H.264 from the first drop-down menu (see image above).
Set the second drop-down to 'Match Source – High Bitrate' unless you want to alter the video size, quality or framerate. Click the green arrow button in the top-left corner to begin the conversion. When it’s finished, Adobe Media Encoder will have saved a new copy of the video with the MP4 extension.
03. Place the Video into InDesign
Indesign Export Interactive Pdf Animation
Back in InDesign, select the empty frame you created a moment ago and choose 'File > Place'. Locate and select the MP4 video you’ve chosen to include and click Open. The video will be placed into the frame, as indicated by diagonal striping and a tiny video icon.
04. Preview your video
Unlike images, InDesign won’t show the content of videos on the page. Instead, you need to use the Media panel, which you can open from 'Window > Interactive > Media'. Here you can preview the video, including sound. You can also set the poster and controls to appear when publishing to PDF and other formats.
05. Set your options
The static image that appears when the video isn't playing is referred to as the 'movie poster'. From the Poster drop-down field on the Media panel you can choose from a range of options: 320kbps mp3 download sites.
- Standard: Inserts a generic icon
- From current frame: InDesign will create a poster from whatever part of the video currently appears in the preview at the top of the panel
- Custom image: You choose an external image (preferably one with a play arrow to encourage readers to click)
Once you've chosen your movie poster, you need to select SkinOverAll in the Controller drop-down field to give readers standard video player controls such as play, pause and volume adjustment. Optionally, you can check the box beside Show Controller on Rollover, which hides the player controls until the reader moves the mouse cursor over the video.
06. Export your document
You're now ready to export your document. From InDesign’s File menu, choose Export. At the bottom of the Export dialog, set the Format to Adobe PDF (Interactive). Click Save.
07. Make it interactive
You'll now find yourself on the Export to Interactive PDF dialog. In the Options section at the bottom, make sure you’ve selected the radio button beside Include All, next to Forms and Media. Selecting Appearance Only inside of Include All would omit the video, using the poster as a static, non-interactive image, just as if you’d chosen to export as Adobe PDF (Print) instead of Adobe PDF (Interactive).
Also check the box beside View After Exporting, which will make the PDF automatically open in Acrobat or Adobe Reader. The rest of the options are at your discretion. Click Export, wait a moment, and enjoy your new PDF with embedded video!
Export Interactive Pdf From Indesign
To learn about even more amazing things you can do with interactive PDFs, watch my Pluralsight video course InDesign CC Interactive PDF.
About Pluralsight
Pluralsight is an enterprise technology learning platform that delivers a unified, end to end learning experience for businesses across the globe. Through a subscription service, companies are empowered to move at the speed of technology, increasing proficiency, innovation, and efficiency. For a free trial and more information, visit www.pluralsight.com.
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You can use Adobe InDesign Creative Suite 5 to include movie or audio files and page transitions in a PDF. These multimedia files don’t play while you’re using InDesign. However, the files play if you export the document to PDF or XML format.
To add a media file and an interactive page transition to a PDF document, follow these steps in InDesign:
1Choose File→Place.
The Place dialog box opens, where you can choose a media file to import.
2Choose a file to import.
You can add AVI, MOV, MPEG, and SWF movie files or AIF, AU, and WAV audio files.
3Click within the document window to place the media file on the page.
The Place cursor appears after you select a file to import into the document. Click where you want the upper left corner to be located on the page.
4Using the Pages panel, add additional pages.
At least two more pages are recommended.
5Add some content to the other pages.
Add text, images, or more interactive objects such as movies or SWF Flash files.
6Using the Pages panel, select a page, choose Page Transitions, and select the desired transition to this page.
You can select any page except the last page, because it has no page to transition to.
Page Transitions can be found in the Pages panel menu in the upper right corner of the panel.
7Choose File→Export and choose Adobe PDF (Interactive).
The Export to Interactive PDF dialog box appears.
8Choose All from the Pages section, select View after Exporting, and choose From Document from the Page Transitions drop-down list.
This enables the transitions you just applied to be used after export to PDF.
9In the Presentation section, choose Open in Full Screen Mode and, in the Buttons and Multimedia section, select Include All.
You can select to open in a different mode, but the most commonly used is Full Screen.
10Click OK to create the interactive PDF.
Your file should open in Adobe Acrobat. If you’re working on a Mac and your PDF viewer is set to Preview, you may need to launch Acrobat and then view the file by choosing File→Open from within Acrobat.
The page transitions you created appear as you navigate from one page to the next.
Export Interactive Pdf Indesign Cc
To view a movie in a PDF file, double-click the movie icon. Viewers need at least Acrobat Reader 6 to view the PDF file and play the media files.