Multiple mp3's on an InDesign page?

[george_8017]

I use InDesign 5.5. I created a page, placed five mp3 songs on it, exported the page as PDF. Got a file whose size indicates that the audio files are all embedded. Yay!

If I open the PDF in Acrobat Reader, clicking on the preview starts every song correctly. That's great, but clicking again, or clicking another song doesn't stop the old song from continuing. Oops! Once started, a MP3 plays to the very end no matter what I do short of closing Reader. If a user clicks several MP3's they all play resulting in a major sonic cacophony... hmm.

Is there an elegant solution to having a handful of songs on a book page? Thank you.

[BobLevine · Accepted solution]

Best advice I can give you is to give this up. You'll never get an acceptable result with multimedia in a PDF. This is especially true using a 13 year old version of InDesign which will probably let you do a bunch of things that aren't even supported anymore.

[george_8017]

Today I field tested the same file at a Net Cafe, and everything worked. Start and stop buttons did appear for every mp3 and functioned perfectly. 

So the issue is only with the 32-bit Reader (24.004.20272) that I have on my own trusty Windows 7 laptop. I ran an update to the latest 24.005.20307 - still the same behavior. I went to Adobe and tried to download a 64-bit Reader, but its installer wanted to nuke my trusty ole Acrobat Pro 8 that I use daily. "No way, Jose."

I guess I'll just put only one mp3 song per page, and spread them out far from each other in the book so by the time the reader finds the next mp3, the previous one finished playing.  These songs are freebies anyway, if they work for the user, they work, if they don't, they don't...

[leo.r]

your users can view the file in countless different PDF readers, including browser-based, in each of which the behavior will be unpredictable.

[george_8017]

Exactly. So I'm thinking of including the mp3's as Easter eggs. The 60x60 preview image would be also a drop cap for the page. If the mp3 plays when clicked, yay. If nothing happens, no harm done.

Maybe put a line of small print at the bottom of the pages: "In new Acrobat Readers, clicking the drop cap letter may do something interesting."

Just for the heck of it, to have a book that (might) play music. The randomness of it alone is entertaining already. 🙂