Do MP4s linked to from PDFs not play over the internet?

[PeytonT]

Hello. This question may concern PDFs only indirectly, but I'm hoping someone may be able to answer it:

I have a website whose pages load PDFs with embedded videos that no longer work since they're all Quicktime which is said to contain a security hole so websites refuse to load them. So I'm trying to re-write it with MP4s instead of MOVs, and using links to them instead of embedding them for reasons I'll explain later if anyone cares.

At present I'm still working and testing as local host. But every time I load a PDF with links to video clips in it (not MOVs but MP4s), they don't play. In fact they seem not to even know they have links since the little pointing finger that should appear when you hover over the icons where the links are does not appear.

However, if I load the identical same PDFs directly from my hard drive all the pointing finger icons do appear and they all work. And I've verified that the PDFs are identical by adding an extra recognizable word inside them.

Is there some permission one needs to set? I've looked in Settings for my Chrome browser and the only plausible ones I see are:

Javascript:Yes,  allowed to use it.

Images: Yes, allowed to show them

Popups and redirects: Yes, allowed to use them.

File handlers: Yes, Web apps can ask to open types of files

All the PDFs are opened by code like the  line below:

href="javascript:document.location="4%20Failure%20to%20Observe%20Distinctions%20Made%20in%20English.pdf';">

And most of them do open the PDFs okay. It's just that when they open their links are not active.

Thanks for what help you may provide! 

[Test Screen Name]

Browsers don't use Acrobat Reader. None of them do a good job of multimedia PDFs. This objective is, therefore, doomed.