Sound problems Indesign epub tested on Apple Books

[judithvilleneuve]

I am making a picture e-book for children (before I made and published cardboard books). When I testet my epub/ book this morning on Apple Books everything was fine. Now I added one more sound on page 3 by pageload and now I hear again too early the sound of page 4. I don't hear the sounds too early which are tied to a button. 

But referring to my buttons: "I have a button connected to several animations - connected to mp3 sounds. On my computer in the Epub preview the animations run perfectly after having pushed the button. When I test in Apple Books, the appropriate sounds are not always played like programmed...(but I charged it manually, perhaps once the book it sold on Apple Books it will be different?)

Please if there is some help for these problems? The epub looks really great on my Ipad, it would be great for designers, if catalogues, photobooks, children's books etc. made with Indesign with sound and animation would properly run. The problems are not huge and appear not all the time, but if you like to sell an epub or you produce for a client, these tiny problems could become an obstacle. Thank you so much in advance! Greetings from France

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I rarely work with multimedia in EPUB, so don't have a specific help answer, but be aware that Apple's reader is nonstandard relative to most EPUB readers. If you are only going to publish to iBooks, you can optimize the document for their reader, but if you are planning to publish on other platforms, you will almost certainly have to have varying EPUB documents to accommodate the differences, especially with audio (and video).

If an EPUB displays fine on Thorium or Calibre, it's likely good for the majority of EPUB readers. But other optimization will be needed in most cases for iBooks and Kindle.

[Derek Cross]

As you are using a Mac and want to produce FXL ePubs, have a look at Circular Software – highly recommended.

https://www.circularsoftware.com

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

As low as is my regard for most EPUB-specific tools, I'd have to agree that they have their place, and FXL EPUBs with embedded multimedia is probably one of those places. There are just too many hurdles to get from a general page-layout tool to that twiddly, complex format.

[judithvilleneuve]

Hello James, Thank you so much for your answers! I saw in the forum how to solve the problem! Thanks for the tip about Calibre and Thorium. I will also test the book there. However, I have already seen the differences with the Adobe epub reader, which means for me I will only publish on Apple Books for the moment. I don't have much text in the book, apart from the children's books I'm also making a book for an artist, the books are mainly interesting because of their photos and photomontages. (A lot of Photoshop!) With a few good animations and some sound it is exactly what I was looking for. And now that it works as it should...c'est parfait!! Thank you so much for your interest and tips and time! Have a great day! Judith

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The Adobe reader, ADE, is an abysmal implementation of EPUB reading and should not be used (1) to evaluate EPUB features or exports or (2) really, at all.

[judithvilleneuve]

Thank you, I am happy to hear this fom an expert, as my epub looked really scary in this reader!

[judithvilleneuve]

Thank you so much for your tip, I will have a look at this page. 

[judithvilleneuve · Accepted solution]

Hello, I found the answer to the sound problem by pageload here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/sound-issues-with-indesign-and-publishing-online... 

["Thanks but I think I found the issue. It seems if the sound files are first in the timing (on Page Load), my issue occurs.

Once I placed them as second in the timing, the issue is no longer there. My document now loads and I hear no more PRE audio clips."]

I tried the same and the problem is definitely gone! Referring to sounds after having pressed a button: I had connected a lot of animations with sounds with this button, which should play one after the other. In this case it is better to work with Start/Pause/Stop buttons. Or several buttons connected to only a few sounds. Thank you for the replies and the tips!