Tutorials

Make your PDF files sing by adding sound to them

You already know the benefits of using Adobe® Acrobat® 7 to create your presentations. But did you know that you can use PDF files to deliver interactive content, such as sound clips? Make sure that your message is heard by adding sound to your next PDF presentation. It’s easy to do with Acrobat 7.

Get started

In this tutorial, you’ll use Adobe Acrobat 7 to work on a multimedia tour of the Freedom Trail, a national park that consists of a collection of historic locations in Boston, Massachusetts. You’ll add a sound clip to one of the pages in the PDF file, and will learn how to control the sound and an associated movie using a button.

To follow along with this tutorial, download the SoundPDF_tutorial.zip file.

SoundPDF_tutorial.zip (ZIP: 11.1MB)

Alternatively, you can use similar files of your own. You’ll need a multi-page PDF file, along with a movie file and a sound file. (We used MOV and WAV formats.) To view the movie used in this tutorial, you’ll need the free QuickTime player installed. The player is available from the Apple website at www.apple.com/quicktime.

To add a sound file:

1. Open the Freedom_Trail_start file that you downloaded and navigate to page 3. If the Advanced Editing toolbar is not currently visible, choose View > Toolbars > Advanced Editing.
2. Select the Sound tool and draw a small square at the bottom of the page on the white area near the edge. The size and exact location are not critically important, as the box will be hidden from view.

Tip: Remember that both the Sound tool and the Movie tool are located in the same position in the toolbar. To change from the Movie tool to the Sound tool, you may need to click on the arrow to the right of the Movie tool and select the Sound tool from the menu that appears. To make both tools visible at the same time, click on the arrow next to either tool and choose Expand this Button from the menu that appears.

3. In the Add Sound window, choose the Acrobat 6 (and Later) Compatible Media option. Click the Browse button to identify the location of the sound file that you are adding to the presentation. Navigate to the sound file Statehouse_audioclip.wav in the audio folder in the Lesson12 folder, and click Select to choose this file.
4. Click the Embed content in document checkbox, and then click OK to close the Add Sound window.
5. Double-click the frame that was created in the previous step. Note that the frame containing the sound includes a border.
6. In the Multimedia Properties window, click the Appearance tab and choose Invisible Rectangle from the Border Type drop-down menu. This removes the black border around the perimeter of the frame containing the sound, making the sound border invisible on the PDF page. Click the Close button to close the Multimedia Properties window.

Add multiple actions to one button

If you have both sound and movie files in a presentation, you can add two actions to a single button to cause both the sound and the movie to play at the same time.

1. Navigate to page 3 of the Freedom_Trail_start.pdf file, and use the Movie tool to add the Statehouse.mov file that you downloaded.
2. Choose the Select Object tool and double-click the Play Multimedia button. The Button Properties window appears.
3. Click on the Actions tab. For Select Trigger, keep the default setting of Mouse Up and for Select Action, choose Play Media (Acrobat 6 and Later Compatible). Click the Add button.

4. In the Play Media (Acrobat 6 and Later Compatible) window, choose Play as the Operation to Perform. Choose Annotation from Statehouse_audioclip.wav from the list of Associated Annotations and click OK. Do not close the Button Properties window, as you will add another action for this button. The second action will also be a Play Media (Acrobat 6 and Later Compatible) action, and will also occur when the mouse is clicked and released, so do not change these settings.
5. Click the Add button and choose Annotation from Statehouse.mov from the list of Associated Annotations in the Play Media (Acrobat 6 and Later Compatible) window. Click OK and then click the Close button in the Button Properties window.
6. Choose the Hand tool and click the Play Multimedia button to play both the sound clip and movie clip simultaneously.