Web Marketing

Embed Video clips.

Inserting a wmv file into Word 2007 and expecting it to convert to a playable embedded file in PDF doesn’t work. Worse still you’ll need Adobe acrobat Pro extended version to do directly embedded video justice (Flash is much better see below).

I was also disappointed with the usability (no transport controls and you had to right click to play). It doesn’t look like a YouTube video with its central play Icon for example.

How to embed video into a PDF Ebook

For me the only sensible option was to create my video (and audio files for that matter) in flash format. Better still use your existing A/V tools, convert it to flash and import it as flash. I found a free tool http://www.flash-video-mx.com/video4web-converter/ which can convert from a variety of formats to flash. It’s also great at compressing the file to reduce its size.

Please see the instructional video below.

Compression is necessary because without it embedding audio and video can make the whole PDF document balloon out of control in size eating up download bandwidth. Once embedded, Acrobat seems to apply further compression to video.  Therefore it’s best to experiment with various frame sizes, frame rates, and compression ratios and see what video looks acceptable and what the most efficient use of file size is.

As with audio you can display an image for the file before it’s played or just use the first frame of the video. I would recommend using an image because that way you are in total control of your “advert” – i.e. what the reader sees to encourage them to click. Again the transport controls for flash video are pretty good.

One note of caution: Heavy use of video also tends to slow the performance of browsing around the PDF file, especially when reaching a page with video set to play upon entering it. Overall I think audio, and even more so video, should be split up into small chunks of flash video and used sparingly. This will change over time though as computers and software continues to push bandwidth boundaries.

This is a tiny extract from the ebook “How to do Ebook Marketing”. Get the whole thing from my company – Dorsetwebsites.com.

81 pages, £7.95 Now Only £1.99 (Limited Offer)

---

The version I am using (Adobe Acrobat Pro 9) is tricky to use when inserting multimedia objects in my opinion. You need to reserve a space for the video to go in the document (within word), then use a cross hair to click and drag where you want the audio or video object to appear and how big it should be. Sounds easy enough but it’s fiddly because in practice it seems to resize and move the final position where the video plays from, once you complete the insertion.