Skip to main content
world_creator
world_creator
Participant
December 10, 2015
Answered

Placing videos into PDF using web URL instead of local file?

  • December 10, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 29385 views

I have used Adobe Chat Support twice but no one knew the answer or how to do this. It is getting pretty frustrating.

I have the latest Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and I want to place videos into my PDF document. Local video files work fine, but I need to insert a lot of videos, meaning the PDF file size will get pretty large, and I don't want that. Instead, I want to be able to use a web URL to reference the video and have that video appear in my document.

I have checked out these resources:

Acrobat Help | Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs

Acrobat Help | Adding multimedia to PDFs

... along with a lot of forums and web, but no working answers have been found.

What I want:

Video playing inside the document, referenced from a web URL, looking like below:

I tried:

Rich Media > Add Video, but this error appears

I tried youtube, vimeo, dropbox .mp4 links but nothing works.

I tried embed codes from youtube but Acrobat says it doesn't recognize <iframe> code.

On the Adobe website I posted, this is what Adobe said:

"Adding video, sound, and interactive content transforms PDFs into multidimensional communication tools that increase interest and engagement in your documents."

"Another way to add multimedia is by entering a URL that refers to a video file or streaming media. Three types of URLs can be used: RTMP, HTTP, and HTTPS. On HTTP and HTTPS servers, H.264-compliant MOV and MP4 files are supported."

My question:

Can what I want be done? And HOW?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer JoelGeraci_Datalogics

    You need to link directly to the video file with a fully qualified URl. You can't use services like YouTube or Vimeo which obfuscate the URL to the actual video.

    Try the URL below.

    https://archive.org/download/CEP318/CEP318_512kb.mp4

    1 reply

    JoelGeraci_Datalogics
    JoelGeraci_DatalogicsCorrect answer
    Participating Frequently
    December 11, 2015

    You need to link directly to the video file with a fully qualified URl. You can't use services like YouTube or Vimeo which obfuscate the URL to the actual video.

    Try the URL below.

    https://archive.org/download/CEP318/CEP318_512kb.mp4

      kevind1758179
      kevind1758179
      Participant
      February 13, 2018

      Wow this problem with linking to a YouTube video has been going on for a long time.  I reported the frustrating problem to Adobe support today and they estimated a fix might be out in a few months.  I hope they are correct.  I remember using the link to YouTube way back around 2007 to 2010 and it seemed to work fine back then.  I am surprised people started having troubles with YouTube links back at the end of 2010 and still no fix has happened yet for sites as popular as YouTube.

      Joel Geraci
      Community Expert
      Joel GeraciCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 29, 2018

      Hopefully you can get to this.

      http://jmp.sh/pyPiB8A


      You didn't mention it in your question but I'm guessing this only happens when you are in full screen mode... at least, that was the only way I could reproduce the problem. It's not actually locking up Acrobat. When you are on a regular page, the page up/down and/or arrow keys will advance the presentation page by page. However, when the page is entirely covered by the video and you click on the video to play it, the video annotation gets the input focus which means that any keyboard or mouse actions will apply to the active video annotation and not the document.

      To advance to the next page, right click on the video and select "Disable Content". You can then advance the presentation normally.

      Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
      Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices