General InDesign CS5.5 EPub Issues/Thoughts

[guardaroba]

I've been playing with the EPub export feature of CS5.5 for the past day, and have a question as well as a few thoughts/feature requests. I wonder if it would be useful to have a general thread for the new EPub feature for a little while, since it will be new to most people?

In any case, my questions: 1) Is it possible to set an object to -not- be included in the export? I assumed this would be an option in the "Object Export Options" dialogue, but it doesn't seem to be. Is this option hidden somewhere else, or is there a workaround? I have a number of objects that are used to add visual interest on the printed layout but that don't make any sense to include in an EPub/HTML export.

2) When I get to the EPub export box there's nothing in the "Unique Identifier" field. I thought I should have the option of using one created by InDesign automatically?

My thoughts: although it's a very welcome upgrade, does it feel to anyone else as though it's a bit half-baked? For example, the new object export options don't seem to be included in the object styles, so they have to be changed object-by-object, which isn't very nice for longer layouts.

Similarly, you can't save different EPub/HTML export settings, which seems like a pretty basic feature to expect.

Finally, the fact that endnotes aren't supported has been a glaring issue for a while now, but it's causing new problems now that EPub/HTML exports are easier. In print endnotes that aren't 'live' are only an issue for the layout person; in HTML 'dead' notes with no hyperlinks are pretty embarrassing.

How have other people been finding the new EPub/HTML export features?

[AnneMarie Concepcion]

Hi there,

There is nothing different about running heads and footers in CS5.5 vs. CS5.  Assuming they're master page items (that you haven't overridden on the document pages) then you don't have to save a version without them. When you export to EPUB, master page items are ignored.

The CS5.5 title is not done yet, but should be out this summer.

Thanks for your support!

AM

[MystiMac]

Thank you so much!!! Really! My headers are in master pages, so I'll just

export my book layout to epub. You've saved me a lot of trouble. I look

forward to your next offerings, re. CS5.5.

~Karen McChrystal

[JessicaBaylis]

I posted this elsewhere, but perhaps this is the place for it, since people here seem to be solving problems left and right!

I'm having a play with CS5.5 and  have been delighted thus far with the embedded audio functionality.  However, I'm having a bit of trouble with the video. I want to embed an  MP4 to be read in an epub, both on an iPhone and an iPad screen. Is this  possible? I know you can make images conform to screen sizes by  rasterising them, but obviously one can't rasterise a video. Embedding  the video at iPhone dimensions seems to mean watching a quite tiny clip  on the iPad, but embedding video at iPad dimensions results in a video  that just won't play.

Is there a workaround for this? I'd  love for the epub I'm making to have that kind of flexibility - I don't  particularly want to have to make a different book for every device out  there.

Thanks for any advice you can give!

[Steve Werner]

I know of one person who has extensively tested placing video and audio in EPUBs for the iPad. It's Elizabeth Castro. She has published a small EPUB about it. You can order it here:

http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2011/05/audio-and-video-in-epub-new-straight-to.html

[marcusstringer]

Steve Werner wrote:

I know of one person who has extensively tested placing video and audio in EPUBs for the iPad. It's Elizabeth Castro. She has published a small EPUB about it. You can order it here:

http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2011/05/audio-and-video-in-epub-new- straight-to.html

NUts you beet me to it, while I was logging in

Yes Liz Castro is the Guru of ePub

http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2011/05/update-to-audio-and-video-in-epub.html

[TomChmski]

I'm going to have to get Liz's download, but this discussion has already been quite enlightening. I'm at a decision point on revising an already publshed ebook, and this is clearing up the issues. I designed and published a multimedia e-cookbook on historic recipes. It has illustrated audia narrations (animations), video demos, extensive link navigaton and pop-up notes instead of footnotes. I designed it in InDesign CS3 and released it as an interactive PDF. I did this just prior to the first release of Kindle, and the whole first wave  of e-readers just didn't cut it for showing the work. Now I'm anxious to get it on the iPad and other tabliets. You can read the PDF on an iPad, but no videos work.

My choices seem to be:

Sell it with a link to the app EzPDF Reader which does play the videos on an iPad and other tablets (as long as they're MP4s). There are some minor work arounds (Video poster images don't show, so I have to place a jpeg below the video to have it show on the page), and the pop up notes don't appear (but I have a glossarhy and notes section duplicated in the back, so I can live with that). The rest of the e-book is untouched and looks great, and it still doesn't read on a Kindle.

Learn what I can of InDesign CS5.5 during a 30-day trial and export it as an ePub3.

Figure out how to do the fixed layout option for the iPad, which puts me into coding where I've gone before, but it's still like stepping into a dark woods.

While keeping it as a PDF seems the easiest option, it depends on potential readers being willing to buy the book AND the app to read it on tablets. Not a good marketing call. While I'm going to plow ahead anyway with learning what I can of CS5.5, I'm still considering any other options and advice if anyone can help. thanks.

[Guest]

May I ask, what the thoughts are towards e-pubs for Android tablets at the moment? I see that Cari's getting her e-mag out there on Android soon. Any one else into Android via InDesign - whether e-pub books or DPS mags? Also, experience/thoughts concerning aggregators or going solo would be interesting. 

[AnneMarie Concepcion]

Hey Bob, that Terry White video is strictly about EPUB. It does not cover DPS at all.

JSemple, everything that Terry showed in that video you linked to is possible with InDesign CS5.5 and EPUB (reflowable) eBooks. Which parts of it don't seem believable to you?

One of the things he showed was how to include an embedded video. At this point, only Apple's iBook application supports that. (Not Kindle. The Nook is beta testing). But note the video is titled "InDesign CS5.5 Publishing EPUBs to the iBook with Video."

AM

[BobLevine]

Then I'm thinking about a different video where he touches on the new features in CS5.5....I'll see if I can find a link.

Ah...here we go: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs-55-design-premium-feature-tour-/design-premium-feature-tour-overview

Bob

[jjsemple]

Anne-Marie, a priori, I don't disbelieve anything Terry says. It was only after I started asking questions on this forum and having people tell me that the Terry White videos exaggerated the capabilities of CS5.5 that I began to question same.

I'm an open vessel; I know nothing, except that I've used Quark, Framemaker, inDesign to lay out print books since 1990. I was working for Apple at the time. Now I have a publishing company. About six months ago we decided to do no more print books, just concentrate on iPad high-design, multimedia books. Since then we have been exploring the capabilities of various tools. Hoping that some vendor would eventually give us drag-and-drop, plug-and-play, one-button from computer to ePub for iPad, we took our time.

It's very hard to get accurate, top-down info so that we can make good decisions. Each time I tell some what we're trying to do, I get different, conflicting answers. It seems to me that Adobe should be evangelizing the ePub to iPad workflow around the clock.

What we want to do: We want to produce of the design-intensive, multimedia iPad eBooks, not Digital Magazines, not Kindle, not anything that can't be leveraged from the iPad version. We'd like tools that give us the most features and control — like the examples we see in the Terry White overviews — for the least amount of programming. The most control so that what we see on the iPad looks like what we see on the computer screen.

Right now, this sector seems to be stuck in a situation similar to the one when I worked for Apple, the situation with the Postscript printer language. We'd have to print to a Postscript file and had no way of seeing what we'd get. Lots of intermediate steps. Little by little, this process became less opaque, more streamlined. We now have inDesign export direct to PDF so we can skip all the intermediate steps. This will happen in the eBook world. Sooner or later. someone, perhaps Adobe, perhaps not, will come up with a drag-and-drop, plug-and-play toolkit so that non-technical, one/two/three-person small shops — writer/illustrator/designer — can create beautiful iPad eBooks without programming.

In the meantime, we need straight answers. Hopefully, your upcoming CS5.5 for ePub course will provide them:

1. Layout and Testing

Layout choices

Style choices

Content and text flow

Design elements

Embeding audio in a graphic

Audio/video

Testing/viewing documents/layouts

Horizontal/vertical issues

TOC issues

Uploading to iPad

Using the layout to manage content flow

Using XML tags to manage content

Naming styles and linked assets

Modifying Text and Images for EPUB Export

Cleaning up the text flow

Applying paragraph and character styles

Modifying nested, GREP, and line styles

Modifying tables

Converting InDesign graphics

Manually optimizing images

Creating a cover image

Adding a custom TOC as the first page of an EPUB file

Adding metadata to an InDesign file or book

2. Exporting to EPUB

Choosing general EPUB export options

Choosing EPUB export options for images

Choosing EPUB export options for contents

3. Previewing and Validating EPUB Files

Previewing EPUBs on your computer and devices

Previewing for the iBooks app

Validating EPUB

4. Editing EPUB Files for Functionality

Getting inside an EPUB file

Identifying parts of an EPUB

Choosing an EPUB editor

Modifying the navigational TOC

Adding and editing metadata

Creating guide sections for iBooks

4. Editing EPUB Files for Formatting

Cleaning up the XHTML files

Cleaning up the CSS file

Setting spacing in the file

Creating drop caps

Creating sidebars and pull quotes

Setting text wrap rules

Creating links

5. Converting EPUB Files to Other ebook Formats

Preparing your EPUB file for Kindle conversion

Converting with KindleGen and Kindle Previewer

Using the Kindle plug-ins for InDesign

Converting for other resellers

6. Distributing Your ebook

Getting an ISBN for each edition

Getting your ebook into the Kindle Store, iBookstore, or NOOKbook Store

Using third-party aggregators

Selling from your own web site or eCommerce site

JJ Semple

PS. I'm enjoying your CS5 course, looking forward to the CS5.5 update.

[AnneMarie Concepcion]

Interesting.

I'm curious, which multimedia ebooks that are on the iPad now are you trying to learn how to create? Any favorite titles?

Are you creating interactive, rich media PDFs of your books at all?

AM

[jjsemple]

Purchasing a iPad this week, I hope to start exploring what's out there. So far, I've mostly been looking at tutorials and training videos to get a handle on the possibilities.

I think Bob raises some good points about what clients will settle for and also about the labor-intensive nature of the process. We have to start working with the tools and testing iterations on an iPad. Hope the encouragment we're getting on this forum and Lynda tutorials like yours will help us accomplish this.

[Derek Cross]

You might consider attending this two-day online webinar: http://indesign2ipad-eorg.eventbrite.com/

Derek

[jjsemple]

Derek,

Thanks, but this one seems more oriented in DPS than ePub; with the RovingBird stuff, way too expensive for a small operation. However, using your lead, I found another from the same group. Unfortunately, it takes place in August. We hope to be further along by then. Depending on our progress, may still do it...

[jjsemple]

What's the best way to embed text in an image? In Photoshop? I read that Apple was going to reject an ePub if text was part of an image because it was no longer searchable? Is there a way to keep the text in the image as text? Without having it move when exported to ePub? I only have about 5-6 short lines of text in each chapter image. The text is actually repeated later on.

I have some audios and videos placed in each of my 7 chapters. When I export to ePub, they don't show up in Calibre or Firefox ePub reader. I get teh following error in ePubChecker: <ERROR: /Volumes/T-Rex03/Kundalini/Books/Carlton/eBookApp/CSS5.5/Book/Test/110514-TaoHoops.epub/OEBPS/110512-Mental.html(30): unknown element "video" from namespace "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">. Am I not setting the controls correctly? Declaring it to inDesign?

I created a style for the first and last lines of some verses so that each vers will be separated from the following one. In addition, in the last line style I selected a paragraph rule to better separate the verses. None of this formatting work appears in the Preview window, except that now the lines are differently justified. Is there any way to get this working properly?

[Silver Plum Digital]

Is there a way to get "Overlay Creator" content to an EPUB, HTML, PDF, etc.?

[BobLevine]

Is there a way to get "Overlay Creator" content to an EPUB, HTML, PDF, etc.?

No.

Bob

[Command_Q]

I continue to toil with imbedding .mp4 files into ePub files using InDesign 5.5 to no avail.  The ePub formats correctly per my articles panel and I even have the page breaks and TOC links all functioning properly but when it comes to playing any video in the ePub through iBooks the video poster is there but the videos just will not play.  Given this groups collective genius might anyone have some insight on how I need to dial the mp4 in?  Specific codec issues?

Thanks in advance for all of your time!

s2japhil

[BobLevine]

Mp4 must have h264 encoding as far as I know.

Bob

[Command_Q]

Bob,

Thanks again for the quick response.  The file is h.264 compliant.  When tested on an iPod I literally get a play icon with a slash through.  On an iPhone 4 it will jump through a few pieces of the video but never finish or push out anything that a viewer could make out.

[BobLevine]

I'm just getting into Epub myself. Have you updated iBooks to the latest version?

Bob

[Command_Q]

That I have my friend, I'd love to test it on an iBooks built for the desktop but Apple hasn't released a desktop version.  I'd love to hear what Adobe's thoughts on video file specifics beyond just a file type, (.mp4)

[TomChmski]

I tested a PDF with .mp4s on an iPad, and the video worked fine

(needed the ezPDF Reader to make that work). I didn't do anything

with the video file other than make sure it was H264 compliant.

Tom Chmielewski

Editor/Publisher

TEC Publishing

(269) 978-8182

www.tecpublishing.com

tom@tecpublishing.com

[Steve Werner]

My testing shows that MP4 (or altenatively m4v) works well in iBooks.

http://indesignsecrets.com/picking-the-best-video-format-for-digital-publishing.php

You can read more about embedding audio and video in iOS and on a Nook in an eBook published by Elizabeth Castro:

http://www.elizabethcastro.com/epub/

[Command_Q]

Steve,

Thanks for the link ... great resource.  Let me extend that to the entire community you guys have been an invaluable resource and I look forward to future opportunities to problem solve with this fine group!

Cheers,

Command_Q