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Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs

  1. Acrobat User Guide
  2. Introduction to Acrobat
    1. Access Acrobat from desktop, mobile, web
    2. Introducing the new Acrobat experience
    3. What's new in Acrobat
    4. Keyboard shortcuts
    5. System Requirements
  3. Workspace
    1. Workspace basics
    2. Opening and viewing PDFs
      1. Opening PDFs
      2. Navigating PDF pages
      3. Viewing PDF preferences
      4. Adjusting PDF views
      5. Enable thumbnail preview of PDFs
      6. Display PDF in browser
    3. Working with online storage accounts
      1. Access files from Box
      2. Access files from Dropbox
      3. Access files from OneDrive
      4. Access files from SharePoint
      5. Access files from Google Drive
    4. Acrobat and macOS
    5. Acrobat notifications
    6. Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
    7. Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
  4. Creating PDFs
    1. Overview of PDF creation
    2. Create PDFs with Acrobat
    3. Create PDFs with PDFMaker
    4. Using the Adobe PDF printer
    5. Converting web pages to PDF
    6. Creating PDFs with Acrobat Distiller
    7. Adobe PDF conversion settings
    8. PDF fonts
  5. Editing PDFs
    1. Edit text in PDFs
    2. Edit images or objects in a PDF
    3. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    4. Edit scanned PDFs
    5. Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
    6. Optimizing PDFs
    7. PDF properties and metadata
    8. Links and attachments in PDFs
    9. PDF layers
    10. Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
    11. PDFs converted to web pages
    12. Setting up PDFs for a presentation
    13. PDF articles
    14. Geospatial PDFs
    15. Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
    16. Change the default font for adding text
    17. Delete pages from a PDF
  6. Scan and OCR
    1. Scan documents to PDF
    2. Enhance document photos
    3. Troubleshoot scanner issues when scanning using Acrobat
  7. Forms
    1. PDF forms basics
    2. Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
    3. Create and distribute PDF forms
    4. Fill in PDF forms
    5. PDF form field properties
    6. Fill and sign PDF forms
    7. Setting action buttons in PDF forms
    8. Publishing interactive PDF web forms
    9. PDF form field basics
    10. PDF barcode form fields
    11. Collect and manage PDF form data
    12. About forms tracker
    13. PDF forms help
    14. Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
  8. Combining files
    1. Combine or merge files into single PDF
    2. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    3. Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
    4. Crop PDF pages
    5. Add watermarks to PDFs
    6. Add backgrounds to PDFs
    7. Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
    8. Publish and share PDF Portfolios
    9. Overview of PDF Portfolios
    10. Create and customize PDF Portfolios
  9. Sharing, reviews, and commenting
    1. Share and track PDFs online
    2. Mark up text with edits
    3. Preparing for a PDF review
    4. Starting a PDF review
    5. Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
    6. Participating in a PDF review
    7. Add comments to PDFs
    8. Adding a stamp to a PDF
    9. Approval workflows
    10. Managing comments | view, reply, print
    11. Importing and exporting comments
    12. Tracking and managing PDF reviews
  10. Saving and exporting PDFs
    1. Saving PDFs
    2. Convert PDF to Word
    3. Convert PDF to PPTX
    4. Convert PDF to XLSX or XML
    5. Convert PDF to JPG
    6. Convert PDF to PNG
    7. Convert or export PDFs to other file formats
    8. File format options for PDF export
    9. Reusing PDF content
  11. Security
    1. Enhanced security setting for PDFs
    2. Securing PDFs with passwords
    3. Manage Digital IDs
    4. Securing PDFs with certificates
    5. Opening secured PDFs
    6. Removing sensitive content from PDFs
    7. Setting up security policies for PDFs
    8. Choosing a security method for PDFs
    9. Security warnings when a PDF opens
    10. Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
    11. Protected View feature for PDFs
    12. Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
    13. JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
    14. Attachments as security risks
    15. Allow or block links in PDFs
  12. Electronic signatures
    1. Sign PDF documents
    2. Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
    3. Send documents for e-signatures
    4. Create a web form
    5. Request e-signatures in bulk
    6. Collect online payments
    7. Brand your account
    8. About certificate signatures
    9. Certificate-based signatures
    10. Validating digital signatures
    11. Adobe Approved Trust List
    12. Manage trusted identities
  13. Printing
    1. Basic PDF printing tasks
    2. Print Booklets and PDF Portfolios
    3. Advanced PDF print settings
    4. Print to PDF
    5. Printing color PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    6. Printing PDFs in custom sizes
  14. Accessibility, tags, and reflow
    1. Create and verify PDF accessibility
    2. Accessibility features in PDFs
    3. Reading Order tool for PDFs
    4. Reading PDFs with reflow and accessibility features
    5. Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels
    6. Creating accessible PDFs
    7. Cloud-based auto-tagging
  15. Searching and indexing
    1. Creating PDF indexes
    2. Searching PDFs
  16. Multimedia and 3D models
    1. Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
    2. Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    3. Displaying 3D models in PDFs
    4. Interacting with 3D models
    5. Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
    6. Setting 3D views in PDFs
    7. Enable 3D content in PDF
    8. Adding multimedia to PDFs
    9. Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
    10. Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
    11. Add comments to videos
  17. Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
    1. Print production tools overview
    2. Printer marks and hairlines
    3. Previewing output
    4. Transparency flattening
    5. Color conversion and ink management
    6. Trapping color
  18. Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
    1. PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
    2. Preflight profiles
    3. Advanced preflight inspections
    4. Preflight reports
    5. Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
    6. Output intents in PDFs
    7. Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
    8. Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
    9. Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
    10. Additional checks in the Preflight tool
    11. Preflight libraries
    12. Preflight variables
  19. Color management
    1. Keeping colors consistent
    2. Color settings
    3. Color-managing documents
    4. Working with color profiles
    5. Understanding color management

Learn how to play multimedia such as audio, video or interactive media in Acrobat.

Before you begin

We're rolling out a new, more intuitive product experience. If the screen shown here doesn’t match your product interface, select help for your current experience.

In the new experience, the tools appear on the left side of the screen.

Play multimedia in PDFs

To play the video or sound file, use the Hand tool or Select tool. When you hover over the play area, the pointer changes to the play mode icon 

Save multimedia from PDFs (Windows)

Right-click on the multimedia file in the PDF, and then select Save Audio As, or Save Video As to save the file.

Supported multimedia files

Following are the types of multimedia supported in PDFs created using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader or earlier:

Video

MP3, MP4, MOV, M4V, 3GP, and 3G2 video files that use H.264 compression. You must have H.264 codecs installed on your computer to play files that use H.264 compression.

Audio

MP3 and MP4

You can play multimedia files on a page or activate them from a link, bookmark, form field, or page action. Each file has a play area that you can use to activate the media. The play area is usually displayed as an image or a rectangle on the PDF page, but it can also be invisible. 

Acrobat and Reader allow you to play legacy multimedia files, like QuickTime, MPEG, ASF, RAM, and Windows® Media files, that were created with an older version of Acrobat. However, you can't create legacy multimedia files using Acrobat and Reader X.

Note:

To help protect your computer from viruses, Acrobat asks you if you want to play multimedia files from unverified sources. You can change this default behavior in Preferences > Multimedia Trust (legacy) > Allow multimedia operations.

Set multimedia preferences

You need to set multimedia preferences for the following two types of PDF files:

  • PDF files created in Acrobat 8 and earlier.

  • PDF files containing multimedia content that needs a plug-in or external player to play, rather than the built-in media player.

You need to specify a media player to play these files.

To do this, press Ctrl + K (Windows) or Command + K (macOS) to open Preferences. Select Multimedia (legacy) > Player Options.

Player Options

Select the format in which you want to run legacy media content: QuickTime, Windows Media, or Windows built-in player.

Cause

Accessibility Options

Specify whether to display available special features, such as subtitles and dubbed audio, when playing media. You can also specify your preferred language for the media in case multiple languages are available.

Manage external players

Acrobat and Reader have a built-in media player that can play most multimedia files, such as audio, video, or legacy multimedia content that requires external resources such as a player or plug-in. 

You can check the supported multimedia files in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader 

Multimedia Trust (legacy)

In Acrobat and Reader 10.1.1 or earlier, you can control how embedded multimedia files in PDF documents are played using the Multimedia Trust preferences. By choosing to play multimedia only in trusted documents, which are approved by you or an author you trust, you can reduce the risk of damage to your computer from programs, macros, or viruses.

The list of trusted documents and authors is not visible and is stored internally. If you add a certified document to the list, both the document and the author's certificate are added to the list of trusted documents. All documents certified by the author are considered trusted. Note that, Trusted documents also include PDFs from authors in your list of trusted identities.

Press Ctrl + K (Windows) or Command + K (macOS) to open Preferences. Select Multimedia Trust (legacy) option from the right panel.

(Acrobat and Reader 10.1.1 or earlier) Display Permissions For

Select to set permissions for either trusted documents or other (non-trusted) documents.

Trust Options

Allow multimedia operations

Select this option to allow media clips to be played. When selected, you can change the permission settings for a particular player and enable options that determine the appearance of the media during playback.

Change permission for selected multimedia player to

Select the player from the list, and then select one of the following options from the menu:

  • Always: Allows the player to be used without prompting.
  • Never: Prevents the player from being used.
  • Prompt: Asks the user whether the player can be used. If you select this option and allow the player to play the media in a particular document, that document becomes trusted.

Allow playback in a floating window with no title bars

Select this option to run the video without a title bar. The result is that no title or close buttons are displayed.

Allow document to set title text in a floating-playback window

Select this option to display a title bar when the video plays back in a floating window.

Allow playback in full-screen window

It automatically plays the video in full-screen mode when it is played back. Full-screen display can conflict with end-user security settings.

(Acrobat and Reader 10.1.1 or earlier) Clear Your List Of Trusted Documents

Deletes the current list of trusted documents and authors. Use this option to prevent media from playing in documents that were previously trusted documents or created by trusted authors. This option is available only when a PDF that contains multimedia is open.

 Adobe

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