Adobe Acrobat on MacOs can't find player for mime format video/x-msvideo

Report · Dec 17, 2024

Hey there, I have an old pdf with embedded multimedia (videos) that I believe are .avi in origin. I'm attempting to view the file and play the embedded videos on Acrobat Pro 2024.005.20320 on MacOS, but when I do so I get a message in Acrobat that it needs an additional player, and redirects me to this link ...which is a URL that doesn't exist (404 error). I have legacy multimedia set to Quicktime in the preferences (it won't let me select anything else), so what's the issue here? Why can't I select which program I want Acrobat to launch to view the video if the correct player is no longer available from within Acrobat itself on MacOS??

Report · Dec 18, 2024

It's always a shame to see Acrobat developers concentrating on the ‘new experience’ and abandoning existing functions and (outdated) links.

Reading these old media requires the Flash Player, which no longer exists.
The only versions of Acrobat that can still read them are versions 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4, because Flash Player is built in.

Current versions of Acrobat can only read media with H264 encoding for video and AAC/MP3 encoding for audio.

See: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/rich-media.html

Report · Dec 18, 2024

Many thanks for taking the time to respond - much appreciated. What I don't understand (and this is directed towards Adobe, not you) is why they don't make use of the "Multimedia (legacy)" preference to launch an external player (and allow selection of something other than Quicktime, which seems to be the only option) if they don't want to handle anything other than H264 encoded video?!? The freely available IINA player on macos works fabulously.

What's even more infuriating, if I use the "Add Rich Media" tool and select "Video", then attempt to edit one of the video placeholders, under "Settings" and "Renditions" there's an <untitled rendition> associated with the video that should be played. If I select "Edit Rendition", then selected "Playback Settings" in the resulting popup menu, there's an empty list of Players for it. If I attempt to add one, the only option is Quicktime (arggh) but even more perplexingly, if I try to select Quicktime and click "ok" it gives me a nonsensical error ("You have not selected any operating system for this player. Please select at least one" - clearly one [all of them] have been selected, and yes I've tried every combination just to see what would happen):

Also, under Media Settings in the Renditions Settings dialog, under "Content Type" there *is* an option to select video/avi. After selecting that and attempting to play the video it *will* play but it will just be a blank screen (it will even have video controls if I select that I want those under "Playback Settings") - and absolutely no errors. I have no idea why the video/avi option is even allowed there.

Absolutely infuriating, like so many of my Adobe Acrobat experiences.

Report · Dec 19, 2024

The trick is to place the video as an attachment in the PDF and use a button (or other) that uses the ‘Open attachment’ function, so that when the user clicks on it the video launches in the default (external) player.

Report · Dec 19, 2024

I'm even motivated enough to reattach the videos to make use of this method, but for whatever reason they're hidden and don't appear in the list of attachments in Acrobat. Sigh.

Report · Dec 20, 2024

A few years ago, someone on this forum told me how to recover an FLV video embedded in a PDF.
The trick was to find the temporary folder in which Acrobat places the video so that it can be played by the external player.
I searched but couldn't find the name or location of this folder.
I hope someone can help you further.