mp3 audio file will not play when I send file to another person

Acrobat relies on external players to handle media content. The Flash player was integrated into Acrobat in version 9, so from 9 on Flash content plays reliably, but everything else requires the appropriate media player to be installed and registered on the user's system.

This discussion is mainly about audio files that are embedded into a PDF as a media resource, not files that are simple attachments to the PDF. But even then, Acrobat can launch attachments by dumping them to the OS, which then activates the application associated with the file's extension. MP3 is very popular and commonly used as the audio format in a flash. It's odd that there wouldn't be a default player that could handle it. What version of Acrobat are your co-workers using? Can they play the MP3 file if you just copy it to thier systems? And finally, just to cover the bases, Do they have speakers attached to their computers?

Hi Thom. Thanks for you quick response. Here is what happened. I used lynda.com to take the tutorial for Mulitmedia projects with Acrobat 9. It stated if I have a wav file, I could convert it to mp3 (which I did in Soundbooth)and the file will embbed in the pdf and play(without an external player). It does on my computer but not on the others.

I do have access to put it in as a .wav or other file but I did not want it to open in the external player. What I did as a work around was put the audio in Captivate 5, made a custom size (300px x 100px) with the playback skin, published the file and used the Flash tool to embbed the .swf file. It now works when I send it to others but it was a bit more work.

I am just not sure why the mp3 file did not work when I sent the file but the audio in a swf file will and it does not open the external player but plays from the pdf. I beleive maybe if I did copy the mp3 to their computer, it might work but this will not help me with the way I need to deliver this training project.

Thanks so much for your help Thom. I really appreciate it!

If the MP3 file is present in the PDF as "native media" (Acrobat 9 or later), Acrobat/Reader version 9 or higher will be required to play the media. Users of Acrobat/Reader version 8 or earlier will not be able to play the audio, even if they have an MP3 player installed.

You can add a "version detection" JavaScript to your PDF (e.g. as a page action), so that end users with older Acrobat versions will be notified that their version will not support the newer media options.
[see sample PDF at: http://www.microtype.com/showcase/MultimediaAsst/Embed-mp3.pdf ]

Alternatively, if they use older versions of Acrobat/Reader and cannot upgrade, you can include the audio files in the PDF as "legacy media" (i.e. relying on external players for playback).

Shlomo Perets, MicroType
http://www.microtype.com

This is exactly the area that I need to bottom. I want to embed short mp3 audio clips into a pdf document that I am creating using Acrobat 9 Pro. I can make it work so far in two ways neither of which are entirely satisfactory;

1) Using the Sound Tool I can place an image of a loudspeaker on the document and associate that with an mp3 file. When clicked Acrobat launches its own swf player. The only trouble is that the player is (justifiably) the size of the rectangle that I drew in the first place to hold speaker image. The controls therefore are too small to see. This method would be absolutely perfect if only the player controls didn't pop up when the speaker image is clicked.

2) I can use the TouchUp Object Tool to place the speaker image on the document and then link it to an external mp3 file. This works quite well in that it launches the default system audio player. The only problem is that the mp3 files are not then embedded into the document but rather have to be sent along with it. Also the system mp3 player of course pops up on top of the pdf every time the speaker image is clicked.

Any suggestions as to a more elegant solution.

Thanks in advance, Jeff.

The usual way to handle this would be to write a simple audio player widget in Flash, that just displays the square play/pause button rather than a strip of controls. You can then embed your SWF using the Multimedia/Flash tool, attach the MP3 using the "Resources" tab, and it'll play natively. You can probably find a pre-made SWF on the web if you Google about for a while, as it doesn't have to be written in any special way, provided you know how to tell it the name of the MP3 file it should load.

Hi Roseman:

I think you might be better if you post your item fresh. I am not an expert on this and still trying to figure it out myself. The answers Tom and Shlomo gave me are correct because it is exactly how my tutorial shows how to do it. For some reason. I still can't get it to work right when I send it to other co-workers so I going a completly different way and not putting it in a pdf. It's driving me crazy!

Good Luck.

Hi jstoli, I'm sorry to here that it's still not working out for you. I'll have a go at UVSAR's idea with the widget and let you know what happens.

Did you experiment with displaying the player in a floating window? Right-click the media rectangle, and choose Properties; set "Playback Style" to: Play content in a floating window, and adjust dimensions (eg Width: 320, Height: 36).