What is the latest update on whether videos can be embedded into PDFs?

[georgianaanthro89]

Hi all

I know there have been posts on this in the past but the ones I have read are over 4-5 years old, and I know Adobe changes its terms/features quite regularly, disabling various things on a regular basis, so I am after a current solution. 

I am a research assistant on a project that is aiming to publish 10x interactive pdfs. Each aims to have 10x 2-minute videos within it, which are fairly important to the academic topic tackled in the book. The publisher has given me contradictory answers on whether or not videos can be embedded within PDFs *without adding to file size*. Is this possible at all? I understand it cannot be done through YouTube or Vimeo due to their terms of service - is there a way to bypass this and use another service? To clarify, we'd like the video to play *inside the book* if the user presses play, but for it to be *Hosted* by a website or another service, and therefore just be *referenced* in the book, not embedded locally - we don't want our pdfs to be more than 40 MB. Is there any way to do this? Or do we need to be resigned to the fact that we will have to send the reader outside of the book, to an external link? We would really prefer not to do this.

I should also mention I am not very technical so in previous threads, I didn't fully understand terms like 'obfuscated URLs' - if possible could you give me an answer in very very simplistic terms? Many thanks for your help - I appreciate it.

I have put this here because from what I understand the typesetter is using InDesign to do the book.

Thanks!!

[BobLevine · Accepted solution]

This is, in my opinion, a fool's errand. If you need this work with streaming video you'll need a web connection anyway so why not just create a web page for everything and be done with it?

[georgianaanthro89]

Thank you Bob. It certainly helps to have a clear answer like this. The reason we have to use a pdf rather than a webpage is that the publisher can only publish the book as a pdf. It is an open-access book in pdf format. They used to make them available in HTML format too, but have abandoned this as it was not very popular. I suppose then the best bet is just to link externally? and have the reader go to youtube, then return to the book. we are just concerned this might be clunky.

[BobLevine]

It's the only way!