Expert: James Fritz - 4/30/2008

Question
Hello,



I have a quick question about exporting an interactive PDF containing video content. I haven't found any information anywhere relating to the average size of movie you can import to InDesign and successfully export it again as an interactive PDF.



The problem I'm having is when exporting to an interactive PDF, InDesign hangs on 'Downloading image' in the "Generating PDF" progress box. I've copied the movie into a new document, so I know it isn't anything else on the page (and previously I was only exporting the page with the movie on), and it still hangs.



I've tried a quick time file (about 200MB) and an MPEG file (about 70MB). Neither will work, and InDesign hangs every time in the same place, and says is "not responding".



I first thought perhaps I was being impatient and it would just take a while as the movie clip is reasonably large, but then the progress bar should be moving if this is the case, and force quite wouldn't tell me that InDesign isn't responding, wouldn't it? I've also left it going for a considerable amount of time to no avail.



I'm stuck. I've looked and looked for three days for an answer to this now. Any suggestions would be most welcome.



Thanks,

Emma

Answer
Emma,

Which version of ID are you using? Please make sure you are patched to the latest version by going to the help menu and choosing check for update.

Inregards to ID hanging on export, please make sure all of your links are updated and ok, also when exporting it as a pdf and you want the movie to be embedded you need to choose acrobat 6 or higher. Also don't forget to choose the checkbox "include multimedia features".

If it is still hanging try changing the options on the on the movie in ID and just link to the movie instead of embedding it, this will make the PDF much smaller and may prevent it from hanging.

I have a feeling that you movie may just be too big and that is causing it to not respond. You can try breaking it up into more manageable chunks (around 20mb) each.

fritz