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Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs

  1. Acrobat User Guide
  2. Introduction to Acrobat
    1. Access Acrobat from desktop, mobile, web
    2. What's new in Acrobat
    3. Keyboard shortcuts
    4. System Requirements
  3. Workspace
    1. Workspace basics
    2. Opening and viewing PDFs
      1. Opening PDFs
      2. Navigating PDF pages
      3. Viewing PDF preferences
      4. Adjusting PDF views
      5. Enable thumbnail preview of PDFs
      6. Display PDF in browser
    3. Working with online storage accounts
      1. Access files from Box
      2. Access files from Dropbox
      3. Access files from OneDrive
      4. Access files from SharePoint
      5. Access files from Google Drive
    4. Acrobat and macOS
    5. Acrobat notifications
    6. Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
    7. Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
  4. Creating PDFs
    1. Overview of PDF creation
    2. Create PDFs with Acrobat
    3. Create PDFs with PDFMaker
    4. Using the Adobe PDF printer
    5. Converting web pages to PDF
    6. Creating PDFs with Acrobat Distiller
    7. Adobe PDF conversion settings
    8. PDF fonts
  5. Editing PDFs
    1. Edit text in PDFs
    2. Edit images or objects in a PDF
    3. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    4. Edit scanned PDFs
    5. Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
    6. Optimizing PDFs
    7. PDF properties and metadata
    8. Links and attachments in PDFs
    9. PDF layers
    10. Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
    11. Action Wizard (Acrobat Pro)
    12. PDFs converted to web pages
    13. Setting up PDFs for a presentation
    14. PDF articles
    15. Geospatial PDFs
    16. Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
    17. Change the default font for adding text
    18. Delete pages from a PDF
  6. Scan and OCR
    1. Scan documents to PDF
    2. Enhance document photos
    3. Troubleshoot scanner issues when scanning using Acrobat
  7. Forms
    1. PDF forms basics
    2. Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
    3. Create and distribute PDF forms
    4. Fill in PDF forms
    5. PDF form field properties
    6. Fill and sign PDF forms
    7. Setting action buttons in PDF forms
    8. Publishing interactive PDF web forms
    9. PDF form field basics
    10. PDF barcode form fields
    11. Collect and manage PDF form data
    12. About forms tracker
    13. PDF forms help
    14. Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
  8. Combining files
    1. Combine or merge files into single PDF
    2. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    3. Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
    4. Crop PDF pages
    5. Add watermarks to PDFs
    6. Add backgrounds to PDFs
    7. Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
    8. Publish and share PDF Portfolios
    9. Overview of PDF Portfolios
    10. Create and customize PDF Portfolios
  9. Sharing, reviews, and commenting
    1. Share and track PDFs online
    2. Mark up text with edits
    3. Preparing for a PDF review
    4. Starting a PDF review
    5. Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
    6. Participating in a PDF review
    7. Add comments to PDFs
    8. Adding a stamp to a PDF
    9. Approval workflows
    10. Managing comments | view, reply, print
    11. Importing and exporting comments
    12. Tracking and managing PDF reviews
  10. Saving and exporting PDFs
    1. Saving PDFs
    2. Convert PDF to Word
    3. Convert PDF to JPG
    4. Convert or export PDFs to other file formats
    5. File format options for PDF export
    6. Reusing PDF content
  11. Security
    1. Enhanced security setting for PDFs
    2. Securing PDFs with passwords
    3. Manage Digital IDs
    4. Securing PDFs with certificates
    5. Opening secured PDFs
    6. Removing sensitive content from PDFs
    7. Setting up security policies for PDFs
    8. Choosing a security method for PDFs
    9. Security warnings when a PDF opens
    10. Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
    11. Protected View feature for PDFs
    12. Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
    13. JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
    14. Attachments as security risks
    15. Allow or block links in PDFs
  12. Electronic signatures
    1. Sign PDF documents
    2. Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
    3. Send documents for e-signatures
    4. About certificate signatures
    5. Certificate-based signatures
    6. Validating digital signatures
    7. Adobe Approved Trust List
    8. Manage trusted identities
  13. Printing
    1. Basic PDF printing tasks
    2. Print Booklets and PDF Portfolios
    3. Advanced PDF print settings
    4. Print to PDF
    5. Printing color PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    6. Printing PDFs in custom sizes
  14. Accessibility, tags, and reflow
    1. Create and verify PDF accessibility
    2. Accessibility features in PDFs
    3. Reading Order tool for PDFs
    4. Reading PDFs with reflow and accessibility features
    5. Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels
    6. Creating accessible PDFs
  15. Searching and indexing
    1. Creating PDF indexes
    2. Searching PDFs
  16. Multimedia and 3D models
    1. Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
    2. Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    3. Displaying 3D models in PDFs
    4. Interacting with 3D models
    5. Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
    6. Setting 3D views in PDFs
    7. Enable 3D content in PDF
    8. Adding multimedia to PDFs
    9. Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
    10. Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
    11. Add comments to videos
  17. Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
    1. Print production tools overview
    2. Printer marks and hairlines
    3. Previewing output
    4. Transparency flattening
    5. Color conversion and ink management
    6. Trapping color
  18. Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
    1. PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
    2. Preflight profiles
    3. Advanced preflight inspections
    4. Preflight reports
    5. Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
    6. Output intents in PDFs
    7. Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
    8. Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
    9. Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
    10. Additional checks in the Preflight tool
    11. Preflight libraries
    12. Preflight variables
  19. Color management
    1. Keeping colors consistent
    2. Color settings
    3. Color-managing documents
    4. Working with color profiles
    5. Understanding color management

Play multimedia in PDFs

Using the Hand tool or the Select tool, click the play area of the video or sound file. When the pointer is positioned over the play area, it changes to the play mode icon .

Save multimedia from PDFs (Windows)

You can right-click the multimedia file in the PDF (on Windows OS), and choose Save Audio As, or Save Video As depending on the type of multimedia content added.

Supported video, audio, and interactive formats

You can play the following types of multimedia in PDFs created using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader or earlier:

Video

Includes MOV, M4V, 3GP, and 3G2 video files that use H.264 compression. It also includes MP3, and MP4 files. You must have H.264 codecs installed on your computer to play files that use H.264 compression.

Audio

Includes audio files, such as MP3 and MP4

You can play these files on a page or activate them from a link, bookmark, form field, or page action. Each multimedia file includes a play area from which the media can be activated. The play area typically appears on the PDF page as an image or a rectangle, but can also be invisible.

Acrobat and Reader also let you play legacy multimedia files created using an earlier version of Acrobat. These include QuickTime, MPEG, ASF, RAM, and Windows® Media files. However, Acrobat and Reader X do not provide a way to create legacy multimedia files.

Note:

To help protect your computer from viruses, Acrobat asks you if you want to play multimedia files from unverified sources. You can change this default behavior in the Multimedia Trust preferences.

  1. Using the Hand tool or the Select tool, click the play area of the video or sound file. When the pointer is positioned over the play area, it changes to the play mode icon  .

Multimedia preferences (legacy)

Two types of PDF files require you to set multimedia preferences:

  • PDF files created in Acrobat 8 and earlier.

  • PDF files containing multimedia content that needs a plug-in or external player to play, rather than the built-in media player.

These files require you to identify an additional media player with which to run the multimedia.

Open the Preferences dialog box, and then select Multimedia (Legacy) from the left side of the dialog box.

Player Options

Choose the format in which you want to run legacy media content: QuickTime, Windows Media, or Windows built-in player.

Accessibility Options

Specify if you want special features (if available) to appear when media plays, such as subtitles and dubbed audio. Specify the preferred language for the media, in case multiple languages are available.

Multimedia Trust preferences (legacy)

Acrobat and Reader play most multimedia files, such as audio or video, using the built-in media player. (For the supported file types, see Play multimedia.) Multimedia content that requires additional resources to play, such as an external player or plug-in, is considered “legacy” multimedia content. You can control the use of external players or plug-ins in the Multimedia Trust (Legacy) preferences.

Multimedia Trust (Legacy)

(Acrobat and Reader 10.1.1 or earlier) In Multimedia Trust preferences, you can specify whether to play embedded multimedia files in trusted or non trusted PDF documents. A trusted document is a document that you or an author you trust has approved. By setting your permissions to play multimedia only in trusted documents, you can prevent programs, macros, and viruses from potentially damaging your computer.

The list of trusted documents and authors is stored internally and can’t be viewed. If you add a certified document to the list, both the document and the certificate of the author are added to the list of trusted documents. All documents that this author certified are trusted. (Trusted documents also include PDFs from authors in your list of trusted identities.)

In the Preferences dialog box, select Multimedia Trust (Legacy) from the Categories.

(Acrobat and Reader 10.1.1 or earlier) Display Permissions For

Choose to set permissions for either trusted documents or other (non trusted) documents.

Allow Multimedia Operations

Select this option to allow media clips to be played. When selected, you can change the permission settings for a particular player and enable options that determine the appearance of the media during playback.

Change Permission For Selected Multimedia Player To

Select the player from the list, and then choose one of the following options from the menu:

Always

Allows the player to be used without prompting.

Never

Prevents the player from being used.

Prompt

Asks the user whether the player can be used. If you select this option and allow the player to play the media in a particular document, that document becomes trusted.

Allow Playback Options

Three playback options enable you to control how the video is displayed.

Allow Playback In A Floating Window With No Title Bars

Select this option to run the video without a title bar. The result is that no title or close buttons are displayed.

Allow Document To Set Title Text In A Floating Playback Window

Select this option to display a title bar when the video plays back in a floating window. To edit the text in the title bar, double-click the video with the Select Object Tool (Tools > Interactive Objects > Select Object). Select Edit Rendition, and then on the Playback Location tab, select Show Title Bar. Add the title bar text in the Title text field.

Allow Playback In Full-Screen Window

This option automatically plays the video in full screen mode when it is played back. Full screen display can conflict with end-user security settings.

(Acrobat and Reader 10.1.1 or earlier) Clear Your List Of Trusted Documents

Deletes the current list of trusted documents and authors. Use this option to prevent media from playing in documents that were previously trusted documents or created by trusted authors. This option is available only when a PDF that contains multimedia is open.

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