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H.264 issues

IanKendall
Registered: Jun 25 2010
Posts: 5

Hello all,

I would like to tap into your collective knowledge for a moment. I produce PDFs with embedded video clips, which so far I have been encoding in FLV without any problems. I am using Acrobat Pro 9.3.2 on a Win7 machine.

Recently I've been discussing the problems with Flash on an iPad, and thought about embedding the videos as H.264 instead of FLV.

I took a test video and compiled it to H.264 using two different applications; Roxio Copy and Convert into an MP4 file and Xvid4PSP into a MOV files (you can tell I'm trying everything here!)

The files embedded into the test document, but the Insert dialog still had the 'Your file will be converted' message - there was no sign of the 'maintain H.264 encoding' check box that is mentioned in the help file.

So, here's the question: does the absence of the H.264 checkbox indicate that my video files are not completely compliant, or is there something wrong with my Acrobat install? Do I need Extended for this to work?

Secondly, should there be any visual change to the player controls with H.264? In the absence of an iPad on which to test, is there any way to tell if the video has been converted to Flash?

Thirdly, am I just wasting my time for a bunch of iPad users, and should stick to FLV which works?

Thank your for your time in reading this,

Ian

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 9.3.1, Windows
UVSAR
Expert
Registered: Oct 29 2008
Posts: 1357
The PDF readers available right now for the iPad do not handle the Adobe PDF extensions required for rich media annotations, irrespective of the format you encode them in. You could bundle the video as a separate H.264 file, but that's about it.


When you add an H.264 file using the Video Tool button (and are *not* embedding it as legacy media) the "maintain encoding" checkbox appears immediately under the filename in the dialog window, but it's disabled unless Acrobat finds the file is indeed H.264 - as the extension can be pretty much anything, it opens the file and checks the header rather than trusting the filename. There's no visual indication of the filetype once the dialog box is closed, and the controls are identical.

Acrobat Pro can place FLV and H.264 video. Pro Extended can place both of those and also convert other formats (AVI, MPEG, etc).
IanKendall
Registered: Jun 25 2010
Posts: 5
Thanks for that.

I am using the Video Tool button, which is why I was surprised not to get the 'maintain encoding' box. I find it strange that two separate apps managed to get the h.264 wrong. If the iPad readers are not going to handle rich media then I don't think I'll sweat much blood on this!

Ian
ramladi
Registered: May 7 2007
Posts: 1
Thanks for your response. I, too, have a need to publish an interactive PDF with either an embedded or linked H.264 video...to be viewed on an iPad. Specifically. sigh.

I've downloaded the GoodReader app (it's sweet!), but no go. My workflow is: InDesign CS5 to Acrobat 9 pro to iBooks or GoodReader app.

What do you suggest? Thanks in advance!

Rita Amladi
ramladi [at] orionac [dot] com