Differences between PDF (Interactive) and PDF (Print)

Question

What are the main differences between PDF (Interactive) and PDF (Print)?
Now it seems to me that PDF (Interactive) is limited version of PDF (Print).

Any links to read about this topic?

Thank you in advance,
Mykolas

FivePicaPica · Accepted Answer

They're really two different options of the same thing.

A print PDF can be interactive and an interactive PDF can go to print.

It really depends on content and distribution.

If a PDF is going to print, it often has no need to retain any of the interactive aspects of a PDF (and the print PDF is unlikely to have video, etc.)

If a PDF is intended to be interactive, it's usually meant to be distributed via web or email, so retaining high res images isn't necessary.

There's a fair bit of trade off.

I usually keep the interactive bookmarks in a print file, but not always.

Harbs. · Answer

There's actually quite a few differences between (Interactive) and (Print).

Here's a list of pointers written by Michael Ninness (previous product manager of InDesign and now working at Lynda.com) http://www.lynda.com/michaelninness

I just got premission from him to post this (Thanks Michael!):

Here is some info for you regarding what choices are being made under the hood when you choose File > Export > Adobe PDF (Interactive).
Things that just happen or are included, with no choice in the dialog box:
Hyperlinks, Bookmarks, Fast Web view, Compress Text and Line Art, Crop Image Data to Frames.
Things that are not included, with no choice in the dialog box:
Visible Guides/Grids, Hidden and Non-Printing Layers, Hidden and Non-Printing Objects, Marks & Bleeds, No Ink Manager or Simulate Overprint options.
Things that you can choose:
Security Settings, Embed Page Thumbnails, Create Tagged PDF, Create Acrobat Layers, Initial View, Initial Layout, Open in Full Screen Mode, Page Transitions, Image compression and resolution.
Other:
Fonts: Subset 100%
Color Conversion: Destination
Destination: sRGB
Profile Inclusion Policy: Include Destination Profile
Transparency Flattener: No Flattening
And lastly, Compatibility is set to Acrobat 9 (PDF 1.7). This last point is important, and largely explains the main reason we split Interactive PDF out as a separate export choice from Print PDF. When you export an interactive PDF from CS5, included media is now written out to the Rich Media Annotation Layer, which means this content is played back via the embedded Flash Player within Acrobat Pro 9 or Adobe Reader 9 or higher. In previous versions, this content was written out to the Screen Annotation Layer, which meant this content was played back via QuickTime. This has been a long-standing headache for end users as playback across platforms was often inconsistent, would frequently break when Apple updated QuickTime, etc.
Lastly, if you want to include rich media in your interactive PDFs (SWFs, audio and video), the only formats supported if you want to target Adobe PDF (Interactive) are MP3 for audio and FLV for video. Other file formats will need to be converted to these formats before you export to Interactive PDF. For video files, you’ll be able to convert to FLV with Adobe Media Encoder. For audio files, you can use any number for free audio conversion tools, including iTunes.

Harbs

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