Adding animations to InDesign to export and view within an Interactive PDF

[Jessay]

Hey all!

Currently working on an assignment and conducting some research into creating an interactive PDF using InDesign. Upon my research and development of my skills in this area i have been able to insert hyperlinks and audio/video which successfully work in the exported interactive PDF. I just can't seem to get any animation working in the PDF? I have tried to do some research on this but keep reaching dead ends as nothing is working. 

I have noticed many people on other sites saying.. "you have to export each individual page out as a single SWF and then place it back into InDesign and then export as an interactive PDF" I can't see this option when i press export, i do see an EPUB format, is this similar?

Any help will be greatly appreciated! 

[Derek Cross · Accepted solution]

Flash is an obsolete format, and you can't successfully use animations and video in Interactive PDFs.

Instead other possibilities include FXL ePub, InDesign's Publish Online or HTML5 using in5.

[BobLevine]

That's because SWF is DEAD! You will not get animations to work in a PDF and I dare say that your audio and video won't work for most people viewing it, either since it's dependent on flash player being installed.

I don't know who gave you this assignment, but they, like you, need to go back to the drawing board.

Tell us exactly what you need and we may be able to give you some recommendations.

[Jessay]

Thanks for both responses, that's a shame then...

The assignment is a very open ended design challenge task, to which i chose from a list to design an interactive PDF hoping to expand my skills in InDesign. Nowhere in the challenge did it say to use animations, i was just conducting some research, hoping it might work but i guess not. 

I will just stick to using hyperlinks and video/audio then for the submission of the final design.

Thanks again 🙂

[Derek Cross]

Why not use InDesign's Publish Online; it's relativity easy to produce documents with hyperlinks, video and audio from InDesign and the output can be viewed almost any device – computer, tablet and smart phone.

LinkedinLearning have some excellent online training videos on how to produce Publish Online documents and you can get a 30-day free trial: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/

[BobLevine]

Might want to give this a read before you spend one more minute on this.

https://www.boblevine.us/its-okay-to-say-no-to-interactive-pdf/

[Jessay]

Hmm interesting, im glad i chose this design task as i've come across a lot of valuable information. I had no clue beforehand that interactive PDF's were not a very viable choice.

So i've come across a few times now with people recommending Adobe's Publish Online feature. Seeing as though this is for an assignment and purely research based - not commercial- I might go ahead and submit the online document for my assignment instead, along with all the insight i've gained. 

Thank you Derek & Bob for the tips!