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Stephanie21778372ac4a
Participant
October 19, 2022
Question

trouble playing a video inside a PDF (created in Acrobat) on iPad Pro

  • October 19, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 1147 views
hey everyone, i am unable to find a solution to this anywhere so i am asking here. it is a very specific issue i am having.
 
i have created a pdf in Adobe Acrobat on mac which includes multimedia (videos), to then transfer this pdf onto an iPad Pro for presentation. The app that'll be used for said presentation is PDF Viewer by PSPDFKit GmbH. It works fine, and plays all videos, except for a single one that just will not play no matter what I've tried so far. The video is MPEG-4 H.264, and all other videos in the presentation are too. I doubt it is the size / bitrate, because other video files in the pdf are larger yet they play just fine.
The video plays as normal on a mac and macbook.
The video itself is able to play on the iPad when i open just the .mp4 file itself, but not within the PDF Viewer app.
 
for the video that doesn't work on the iPad, here is a HTML file created by MediaInfo I can provide the video too if needed.
 
 
so far I have tried the following (all with no success):
 
  • using a different PDF editor/viewer app (all the ones I've tried so far have not played any of the videos. if you know one that I could try, please let me know)
  • converting to other supported formats, such as m4v
  • importing to after effects and saving the video again separately
  • changing preset, bitrate, e.g. Mobile Device 720 HD, Source Bitrate, etc.
  • format level from 4.1 to 4.2 (i don't know if this could even have something to do with it, but i am kinda trying everything)

 

 

TL;DR: one specific mp4 file within a pdf presentation plays on mac, but not on iPad Pro PDF Viewer
 
 
I appreciate any help I could get for this, it is really puzzling since every video I've tried works with no issue except for this one. Thank you
This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

S
Stephanie21778372ac4aAuthor
Participant
October 27, 2022

An update to this: 

I am currently still in contact with the support of the PDF Viewer app, and we have worked out the following.

 

  • The video works on their devices (tested on iPad Pro 11 2018 iOS 15.1 and iPad Air 5th gen iOS 16.1). 
  • They created a PDF file, just like I have, with Adobe Acrobat, and tested it on their device. The video works.
  • They sent said PDF file to me, which I then tested on my iPad, and it is able to play the video within that PDF file. 


So, the issue must be with my version of Adobe Acrobat, or at some point in the pipeline from Adobe Acrobat to PDF Viewer something seems to go wrong. I have attached screenshots from the "about" of Adobe Acrobat, and hope to hear back from the support again as well. 

 

I will share the files we used to test this: 
"multimedia_test" is the one from me. "Multimedia" is the file created by the support. Both files contain 2 videos we used to test this, and video 1 is the one which initially did not work on my device.

 

A colleague got the video file optimized for mobile devices as well as lower the file size but the same issue persists. However we also found out that when created in InDesign as an interactive PDF, the video does play as normal.

 

Regards and thank you for your help,

Stephanie Hoy

S_S
Community Manager
S_SCommunity Manager
Community Manager
November 1, 2022

Hi @Stephanie21778372ac4a

 

Hope you are doing well.

 

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I will be moving this forward to the product team for further investigation  and will get back to you with the findings at the earliest.

 

Thanks,

Souvik.

    Karl Heinz Kremer
    Community Expert
    Karl Heinz KremerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 19, 2022

    Have you tried to contact the makers of the viewer application you are using on your iPad? They are the only ones who can answer your question. The software you are using is not an Adobe product, so this forum is not the right place to ask this question. 

    S
    Stephanie21778372ac4aAuthor
    Participant
    October 19, 2022

    Yes, I have sent a ticket to their support. However I wanted to make sure and submit this question here too, since the presentation was originally made with Acrobat. I am aware it might either have something to do with the video itself or the Viewer app, but I was hoping that maybe someone would be able to help me here as well by chance. 

    I'm waiting on their reply right now to the ticket I've sent.

    Karl Heinz Kremer
    Community Expert
    Karl Heinz KremerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 19, 2022

    Does it work correctly in Acrobat? If so, it's something we would discuss here. As you can imagine, Adobe as the owner of this forum does not want us to discuss competing products. 

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