Adobe Captivate Article

Adding Adobe Captivate movie clips to a PDF file

Have you ever dreamed about doing more with a PDF file than simply view static text? Well now your dreams can come true, and you can dazzle your audience. As some of you know, you can add hypertext links inside a PDF file, however, you can actually be even more creative by inserting 3D images and movie clips.

This article describes and demonstrates how you can embed SWF (movie) files, created in Adobe Captivate into a PDF file. You will also learn how to provide a poster image that readers can use to activate the movie clip.

Requirements

In order to make the most of this article, you need the following software and files:

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional or higher

• Try
• Buy

Note: The Professional version is required. The Standard version does not contain the Movie Tool.

For readers to view embedded movie clips, they must have one of the following versions of Acrobat Reader:

Adobe Reader 6.0 or higher (for Windows)

• Download

Adobe Reader 8.0 or higher (for Macintosh)

• Download

Sample files:

• movieclip_to_pdf_files.zip (ZIP, 156K)
  (Includes a sample PDF file with a SWF file embedded.)

Prerequisites:

To make best use of this article, you should be familiar with creating SWF files using either Adobe Flash or Adobe Captivate. In addition, you should have experience using Adobe Acrobat to create a standard PDF file from a source document.

Overview of PDF and Adobe Captivate

Before you learn the procedure for adding movie clips to a PDF file, it would be helpful to obtain some information about how PDF and Adobe Captivate have evolved separately over the years. Then, you will have a better understanding how these files can integrate with one another.

History of PDF files

PDF, which is an acronym for Portable Document Format, was created by Adobe in 1990. The purpose of PDF is to provide a reliable way to view, print, and share information with others. The benefit of a PDF file is that it will display and print the same way all the time. It is one of the best methods to distribute documents on the web, and is now the ISO standard for archiving electronic documents. PDF files are now used by more than 500 million people across the world.

History of Adobe Captivate

According to Wikipedia: "Adobe Captivate is an E-learning Windows authoring tool to create software demonstrations, software simulations, branched scenarios, and randomized quizzes in SWF format. It can also be used for screencasts, podcasts, and PowerPoint conversion to Flash files."

Adobe Captivate, formerly called RoboDemo, was developed in 2002 by eHelp Corporation, the creators of RoboHelp. Adobe Captivate was first released in 2004 by Macromedia. The latest version of Adobe Captivate, Adobe Captivate 3, was released in 2007.

Preparing to add movie clips to a PDF file

You can easily use Adobe Captivate to create SWF files without multimedia or programming skills.

SWF is a compiled and published file format that cannot be edited with Adobe Flash. Also, only a single SWF file can be embedded into a PDF file. You need to avoid creating SWF files that need additional files to run. These additional files cannot be accessed by the PDF, so your movie clip will not run properly.

The following sections of this article describe special precautions that you must take when creating a movie clip in Adobe Captivate or when using skins and playback controls in a SWF file.

Precautions when creating movie files in Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate 3 can generate multiple SWF files. When you create a SWF file to embed within a PDF, it is very important that you be careful to create a single SWF file. Specifically, you need to avoid including the following animation features in your SWF file, which may generate additional files:

• Flash Video (FLV)
• Full-Motion Recording (FMR) slides

In addition, do not include the following Adobe Captivate question types:

• Question Pools
• Hotspot Questions

Figure 1 shows the Adobe Captivate Quiz menu, which contains question types that may produce additional files.

Figure 1. Adobe Captivate's Quiz menu

Tip: If you are unsure whether a Adobe Captivate technique will produce additional files, prepare your SWF file and run it in a directory without any other files except the associated .html file. If the SWF file runs without the inclusion of other files, it should run fine when it is embedded into a PDF file.

Including skins and playback controls in a SWF file

Be careful if you want to embed a SWF file that contains skins and/or playback controls. The playback controls are generated as a separate SWF file. However, you can embed the playback controls into your main Adobe Captivate content by deselecting borders. That is, you need to deselect the Show Borders checkbox in Adobe Captivate.

Perform the following steps to deselect borders in Adobe Captivate when using skins and/or playback controls :

1. Open the Adobe Captivate movie file (.cp) in Adobe Captivate.
2. From the Project menu, select Skin. The Skin Editor dialog box displays.
3. In the Skin Editor dialog box, select the Borders tab.
4. Deselect the Show Borders option, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Borders tab in Skin Editor dialog box

You are now ready to save the movie clip as a SWF file.

Preparing your PDF file before adding a movie clip

After creating the SWF file, you need to write the source material for the PDF using another tool such as Microsoft Word. After creating the source material, use Adobe Acrobat to create a PDF file. Ensure that you keep sufficient spacing in your document where you will later include the movie clip.

At this point, you now have the PDF file where you want to insert the SWF file.

Adding movie clips to a PDF file

The following sections of this article describe the steps for adding a movie clip (SWF file) to an existing PDF file.

Adding a movie clip to a PDF file

Perform the following steps to select the area of the PDF document where you want to add (show) the movie clip:

1. Use Adobe Acrobat to open the source PDF file.

2. From the Tools menu, select Advanced Editing. From the Advanced Editing submenu, select Movie Tool, as shown in Figure 3.

   

   Figure 3. Selecting Movie Tool

3. Drag the mouse pointer over the area of the PDF document where you want to place the movie file. The Add Movie dialog box displays, as shown in Figure 4.

   

   Figure 4. Add Movie dialog box (empty)

Completing the Add Movie dialog box

This section of the article explains the procedure for completing the Add Movie dialog box. You will learn how to select the content settings and import the SWF file into the PDF file. In addition, you will find out how to embed the SWF file into the PDF file so that you only need to send one file (the PDF file) to the user. If the SWF were not embedded in the PDF, you would need to include the SWF file plus the PDF file in order to run the movie clip.

In this scenario, you want the movie clip to work with Acrobat 6 or later. Also, since you don't want to have to send out the SWF file along with the PDF file, embed the SWF file's content into the PDF file.

Perform the following steps to complete the Add Movie dialog box:

1. In the Content Settings section, select the Acrobat 6 (and Later) Compatible Media radio button.

2. To specify the movie clip, type its file path or URL in the Location box or click the Browse button to locate the SWF file on your computer. Once it's located, double-click the file to specify the SWF file name and path into the Location box, as shown in Figure 5.

   

   Figure 5. Add Movie dialog box (SWF file added)

Select the Embed content in document checkbox to include the movie file in the PDF document. If this option is not marked, the document includes a link to the external movie file.

Creating a poster from a file

After embedding the movie clip into the PDF file, you still need a convenient way for the reader to launch the movie within the file when desired. Although there are different methods that you can use to launch the movie clip, one of the easiest and most desirable methods is to create a "poster." A poster is an image, such as a GIF or JPG file, that can be used as a placeholder for launching a movie clip. The poster image remains static in the PDF until it is selected. When you click the poster image, the movie clip launches. Figure 6 shows a sample poster image.

Figure 6. Sample poster image

Perform the following steps to create a poster from a file:

1. In the In the Add Movie dialog box, locate the "Poster Settings" section.
2. Select the "Create poster from file" button as shown in Figure 7. The poster is added to the document at the location where the movie clip will play.
3. Click OK to save the settings for the Add Movie dialog box.
4. The poster is placed in the box where the movie clip will play. It is a good idea to assist the reader in playing the movie clip by providing a short instructional statement that explains how to start the clip. For example, in the PDF file text, you could add "Click the title image below to view the movie clip."
5. You are now ready to save the PDF file with the newly added movie clip and poster. From the PDF File menu, select Save.

6. Close the PDF file.

   

   Figure 7. Create poster from file

Viewing the movie clip in a PDF file

Now that you have embedded your movie clip and poster into the PDF file, you are ready to view your movie.

Perform the following steps to view the movie clip within a PDF file:

1. Open the PDF file that you previously saved.
2. Locate the portion of the file where you added a poster image.
3. Click the poster image to launch the movie clip.
4. The movie clip plays within the preselected area of the PDF file.

Using Adobe Digital Editions to enhance the quality of embedded movie clips in PDF files

Since technology is changing rapidly, there is now an alternative method than Acrobat Reader for viewing embedded movie clips. When using Acrobat Reader to view a movie clip that is embedded in a PDF file, users will experience a distracting “Manage Trust for Multimedia Message” that requires users to choose one of the following:

• Play the multimedia content this one time.
• Play the multimedia content and add it to my list of trusted documents.

By downloading a free copy of Adobe Digital Editions, users can avoid the display of the “Manage Trust for Multimedia Message” each time a new movie clip is launched from within a PDF file. According to the Adobe website: “Adobe Digital Editions is an engaging new way to read and manage eBooks and other digital publications. It is built from the ground up as a lightweight rich Internet application (RIA). Adobe Digital Editions works online and offline and supports PDF- and XHTML-based content as well as Adobe Flash SWF for rich interactivity.” Refer to the last section of this article for additional references on Adobe Digital Editions.

Conclusion

This article described how to embed a movie clip into a PDF file. Would you like to see a sample PDF file that contains an actual movie clip? Download the sample file in the Requirements section at the beginning of this article for a PDF document that animates the steps involved in the procedure.

After you open the file, locate the Introduction section. Inside the Introduction section, the following sentence will display:

Click the title image below to show a movie clip of the "Adding a Movie Clip to a PDF File" procedure.

After you click the image box, the movie clip appears.

Where to go from here

I recommend the following books to obtain additional knowledge on using PDF files and movie clips (SWF):

• Adobe Reader 7 Revealed: Working Effectively with Acrobat PDF Files by Ted Padova (2005)
• Acrobat 6 and PDF Solutions by Taz Tally and Taz Tally Ph.D. (2004)
• Essentials of Adobe Captivate 3 by Kevin A. Siegel (2007)
• Bill McCoy’s Adobe Blog Entry (February 20, 2008)
• Adobe Digital Additions (Adobe website)
• FAQs on Adobe Digital Editions (Adobe website)

Attributions

The following articles and people assisted me in writing this article:

• Wisdom of the PDF Sage
• Leonard Rosenthol's thoughts on all things PDF
• Wikepedia definition of Adobe Captivate
• Silke Fleischer, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Captivate, who is responsible for product marketing.
• R. J. Jacquez, a Senior Technical Evangelist for the new Adobe Technical Communication Suite (FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Adobe Captivate, and Acrobat 3D).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

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