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obranquelinho
Participant
January 17, 2018
Question

ID export format for animated content?

  • January 17, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 316 views

I am creating a document using a 2017 release of InDesign (12.x) and would like to include short clips of animated content.  Our current documents are mechanical assembly instructions containing text and jpegs that are output in PDF(Print) format for use on both PC and iPad devices.  After experimenting with adding animated (MP4) content to the documents I found that although I was able to play the content on a PC using a PDF(Interactive) document, the iPad will not play the PDF's animated flash content.  I have experimented with exporting the document as an ePub for the iPad but this requires saving and maintaining updates to two parallel files (PDF and ePub) per book due to text formatting and layered object constraints with the iPad. Ideally we would like to maintain the PDF format as there are several hundred documents that would need to be converted over to a new format.  Is there a better format, or other options, for exporting the document that can be read on both platforms and still retain the video content?

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    1 reply

    BobLevine
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    January 17, 2018

    First you say MP4 and then you say flash. Which is it?

    Hint: Correct answer is actually neither. This is not what PDF is intended to do and frankly, you're wasting time and effort.

    Answer to your final question is (IMO), no!

    obranquelinho
    Participant
    January 18, 2018

    MP4 or Flash?  Well, an MP4 file was placed into the InDesign document, which was output as a PDF document on export.  The PDF format handles rich media as a Flash object and iPads do not allow Flash.  Or so I understand, without delving into semantics.

    BobLevine
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    January 18, 2018

    Regardless of what you consider semantics, my original response stands.

    I wrote this up a couple of years ago but nothing has happened to change my mind.

    It's okay to say no to interactive PDF