where are the controllers????

[robertop44610429]

Good morning,

in indesign 2019 there are controllers in the multimedia files menu. in indesign 2020 they are gone. where did they go?

this is not possible..... 

[Guest]

Moving to the InDesign forum from Get Started

[robertop44610429]

.... and this???...

could not convert "10 cable glands.indd".

the IDML file conversion service is currently unavailable. Try again later.

What is going on?!?!?!?

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi Roberto,

instead of the Creative Cloud service that is converting your document you could simply export or save as IDML from InDesign 2020. Work on with the IDML file in CC 2019 then: Open the IDML file and save the converted document to a new name. Do not overwrite your existing 2020 document.

Now to the missing control:

The developers removed all things Flash related from InDesign 2020.

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/whats-new/2020.html#flash_format

FWIW: With that also another control was removed:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/39514030-restore-video-...

If you depend on this best work on with InDesign CC 2019.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[robertop44610429]

ok thank you Uwe, 

this however is not acceptable.
controllers are essential for viewing the video, this is very frustrating for me!

[Derek Cross]

If you mean Flash facilities option being removed from InDesign 2020, this is because Flash is an obsolete format.

[BobLevine]

What format are you exporting to from InDesign?

[robertop44610429]

it will also be obsolete but it is the only one that gives the possibility for a pdf format to have an integrated video (without external links)

[robertop44610429]

...

[BobLevine]

Video in a PDF? Forget it.

It won't work without flash player installed on the machine it's being viewed on and then only with Acrobat or Reader. Third party PDF readers are a crapshoot and it won't work at all on mobile.

I wrote this four years ago. I stand by it today: https://www.boblevine.us/its-okay-to-say-no-to-interactive-pdf/

[Pickory]

Hi Uwe,

I wonder if the the controllers are still there, only removed from the UI? You might be able to set the controllerSkin from a script. 

P.

[BobLevine]

Even if they are, what good are they? They only worked with Flash.

[Pickory · Accepted solution]

Hi Bob,

The customer wants to use them. Probably better going back to CC2019, as Uwe suggested.

P.

[BobLevine]

And then they'll be back to complain it doesn't work.

Oh well, if they want to go through all of this for next to nothing, then yes, they'll have to go back to 2019, but it's very important for them to understand the repercussions of using it to understand that it's obsolete and most of their audience won't be able to see it.

[Derek Cross]

You have three alternative format options to consider: FXL ePub, InDesign's Publish Online or in5 https://ajarproductions.com/pages/products/in5/

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi Roberto,

you could add the controls with Acrobat Pro DC. Just did this with a sample movie I placed on an InDesign page and exported to PDF Interactive. Think, that Flash Player must be installed to do this.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[BobLevine]

Flash player must be installed to add it and to view it.

Again, giant waste of time.

[Laubender]

Hi Pickory,

property controllerSkin is still available with InDesign 2020.

Had no problem to change the value for controllerSkin using ExtendScript.

The only issue is:

I found no way to export a sample movie to PDF Interactive with the controller skin intact.

Tried this with InDesign CC 2015 and 2020. Same negative result with both versions.

So I enabled the skin with Acrobat Pro after installing the Flash Player.

That worked as expected.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[JonathanArias]

correct. anything that had flash based technology is gone in Indesign 2020. if you dont' see it. it had flash in it, so its gone!

[Dave Merchant · Accepted solution]

Free InDesign script to give you back the controller menu in a dialog box: https://www.uvsar.com/blog/indesign-mediapanel-controller

The Media Panel might be borked, and Adobe on UserVoice shows no sign of wanting to do a thiing about it, but all the SWF helper files required for interactive PDF export, and Flash-native export, are still part of the ID2020 (15.0.2) installation - on Windows look in Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign 2020\Presets\multimedia. Once the controllerSkin / showController properties are set on a movie object, InDesign 2020 will embed the skin SWF into the PDF's Rich Media Annotation and it will work properly in Acrobat/Reader. The choices are saved in the INDD file just as they always were.

Adobe may have decided they now hate Flash, but they made it core to the PDF ISO 32000/EL3 specification for Rich Media, so until PDF/2.0 comes around and replaces it, they are stuck with supporting SWFs inside Acrobat. The InDesign and Acrobat programmers don't talk to one another about ISO standards, so we get borkage that Adobe then claims as "policy". It's nothing of the sort.

[Test Screen Name]

I don’t think Adobe have any intention of supporting SWF in Acrobat after the end of life of Flash Player this December. How would it work with Flash Player gone? I think

Adobe were wise to remove this from InDesign, and your script may just lead people the wrong way... 

[Test Screen Name]

Ah, here we are, an official statement. SWF in PDF will not be supported after December. https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/flash-format-support-in-pdf.html

[Dave Merchant]

The ISO 32000-1/EL3 standard defines how a Rich Media annotation is structured, and Adobe's implementation for sound and video media content relies completely upon Flash Player. It is possible to extract the raw MP4 video data and play it through something else (like in the bad old days pre-Acrobat 9 when we handed off to the operating system video player, and had a truckload of exploits because of it), but the controller buttons and playback options are defined solely by the embedded SWF files and not by any settings in the PDF "dictionary" itself. It's a stupid system but Adobe went with it back in the days of Acrobat 9 so they could promote Flash Professional, and now they get to feast on their own dogfood.

In InDesign the controller SWF filename gives a hint as to which buttons it defines, but that is only because the SWFs were poached from the old Flash Pro libraries; they could just all be called "X.swf" as far as ISO 32000 is concerned. Unless the PDF rendering application can run the videoPlayer and skin SWFs it has no idea whatsoever what the playback settings should be - and as people in this thread have found to their cost if there's no skin to load, you have zero control over playback. Acrobat doesn't think "gosh, maybe I should show people a default set of controls..." because the rules say that having no skin must be an intentional choice that should be respected.

ISO 32000-2 (PDF/2.0) is very clear; Rich Media annotations remain the correct and proper way to deliver video and 3D, but it drops the specific scenario where the media being played is itself a SWF file [see ISO 32000-2:2017 table 342]. PDF/2.0 does not add any new ways for the annotation to define its playback options*, it just copies the Adobe EL3 implementation which assumes that something embedded alongside the media will "handle" all that stuff when it is sent to the rendering engine.

*(to be geekily specific there should have been new entries in the /RichMediaPresentation dictionary to define controller buttons, etc. but since Adobe had said it wasn't necessary, ISO went along)

Whatever might happen in the future is beside the point: PDF/2.0 does not revoke PDF/1.x, the billions of existing files do not suddenly become "wrong". Removing as-authored playback of anything with embedded video or sound pre-PDF/2.0 would break files which comply to a valid ISO standard. Since Adobe claims Acrobat is the world's only "compliant" renderer, they have boxed themselves into a corner. If you create a PDF today, embedding a video that just has play and mute buttons which appear on rollover, then that is precisely what must appear whenever that document is opened.

[Test Screen Name]

But, given Adobe's announcement that I linked to, are you really confident that the things you say that must happen, are you confident that they will happen? I'm not.

[BobLevine]

They won't. None of this stuff works anywhere but Acrobat now and even then if the computer it's on doesn't have Flash Player installed it won't work.

The idea of putting multimedia in a PDF (at least until PDF 2.0 magically appears) is a fantasy for anything except a very controlled environment.