[xep-support] Re: how to embed an mp4 video in PDF?

Mon May 25 13:05:10 PDT 2020

Hi Kevin,

You have been very helpful, as always.  My client decided to follow your 
advice and use the attachment feature.

Thanks.

Bob Stayton
bobs at sagehill.net

On 5/21/2020 12:43 PM, kevin at renderx.com wrote:
>
> It could be that when you run Adobe Acrobat, you are inserting a video 
> that gets converted in some way … like it is played using Flash player.
>
> Are you on iOS by any chance?
>
> I will note that I did not click any video insert tool, I merely ran 
> acrobat and dragged the video into the edit area which launched a 
> wizard (possibly the same one).
>
> The proper mimetype is “video/mp4”.
>
> The reason I suspect the video is converted is that if you get then a 
> message stating that you need a plug-in to play the RenderX one, that 
> is suspect.
>
> Can you play the video raw?
>
> I replicated this in my setup below by testing an alternate video that 
> actually was mp2 and I got a Windows Store message to download and 
> install the codec to support mp2.
>
> I then tried to play the video and I got the same message as the 
> built-in Windows media player is my default player.
>
> So, it is all unclear to me as much of the multi-media stuff and not 
> much used in PDF.
>
> But file attachments as I suggested are widely used, even now we have 
> customized solutions where the XML to generate the PDF is injected 
> into the PDF.
>
> Kevin
>
> *From:* Xep-support <xep-support-bounces at renderx.com> *On Behalf Of 
> *kevin at renderx.com
> *Sent:* Thursday, May 21, 2020 12:25 PM
> *To:* 'RenderX Community Support List' <xep-support at renderx.com>
> *Subject:* [xep-support] Re: how to embed an mp4 video in PDF?
>
> So, I went through many things here and I do not believe this is a 
> “RenderX” issue, I believe this is some Adobe settings issue.
>
> To test I created one PDF with RenderX and one using Adobe Acrobat 
> using the exact same video.
>
> At first, I could not get anything to play at all … Adobe would open 
> and when the video was selected to play, Adobe would just crash.
>
> This happens for both the RenderX one and Adobe’s own one.
>
> I then changed some settings in Acrobat to enable protected mode at 
> startup (which is in Security Enhanced) and then both would play but 
> Audio only.
>
> The important point here is that both behave exactly the same.
>
> There is nothing in RenderX that is in the pure Adobe solution and it 
> yields the exact same result for me.
>
> Now, no video but audio is strange as it could be I am missing some 
> codec to display the video on my machine … but I do not think so.
>
> I converted the MP4 to a few other formats and went through this exact 
> process and got the exact same result.
>
> No video, just audio.
>
> I can also double click the video and it plays in my media player 
> without issue.
>
> So, might I suggest using file annotations as I would think that is 
> actually a better way to do it anyway. Then the recipient can view the 
> video in their own way, whatever is the default player on their machine.
>
> To do this, one could do like this:
>
> <rx:pdf-commenttitle="Video Attachement"content="A video">
> <rx:pdf-file-attachmentsrc="url('SampleVideo_1280x720_1mb.mp4')"
> filename="SampleVideo.mp4"
> icon-type="paperclip"/>
> </rx:pdf-comment>
>
>
> This would attach the video inside the PDF and double-clicking the 
> icon will launch an external viewer appropriate for the filename 
> extension.
>
> You can use the same method to embed Word, Excel … just about any 
> filetype you wish.
>
> You can also expose the “Attachments” bar in Adobe Reader to see the 
> attachment and launch from there.
>
> Kevin Brown
>
> RenderX
>
> *From:* Xep-support <xep-support-bounces at renderx.com 
> <mailto:xep-support-bounces at renderx.com>> *On Behalf Of *Bob Stayton
> *Sent:* Thursday, May 14, 2020 3:21 PM
> *To:* RenderX Community Support List <xep-support at renderx.com 
> <mailto:xep-support at renderx.com>>
> *Subject:* [xep-support] how to embed an mp4 video in PDF?
>
> I have a client who wants to embed an MP4 video into the PDF generated 
> by DocBook and XEP, but I'm not having much luck.
>
> I followed the XEP User Guide, and so I insert an rx:media-object 
> element in an fo:block for the video.
>
> <rx:media-object xmlns:rx="http://www.renderx.com/XSL/Extensions" 
> <http://www.renderx.com/XSL/Extensions> embed="true" 
> show-controls="true" src="url(file:///C:/xml/video_files/video2.mp4)" 
> width="100%" height="auto" content-width="scale-to-fit" 
> content-height="scale-to-fit" content-type="auto"/>
>
> I also included the following pdf-version processing instruction at 
> the top of the FO:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
> <?xep-pdf-pdf-version 1.5?>
> <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" 
> <http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format> ...
>
> When I process the .fo file with XEP 4.24, it seems the video is 
> included in the generated PDF file, because the XEP process does not 
> report an error, and the file size indicates the video is included 
> (very large file).
>
> But the presentation of the video in the PDF is useless.  I just get a 
> Play button that looks like an arrow inside an ellipse.  When I press 
> the Play button in Adobe Acrobat Pro 9, I get a "Multimedia Player 
> Finder" popup that says:
>
> "The media requires an additional player.  Please click 'Get Media 
> Player' to download the correct media player."
>
> I thought the issue might be the content-type attribute, but every 
> variation I try results in the same display.  Here is what I tried:
>
> content-type="content:video/mp4"
> content-type="video/mp4"
> content-type="content:video/mpeg"
> content-type="video/mpeg"
> content-type="content:auto"
> content-type="auto"
>
> I can demonstrate that Acrobat Pro 9 supports mp4 videos by manually 
> inserting the video into the same PDF file using the menu items Tools 
> > Multimedia > Video Tool.  That inserts the video, displays the video 
> controls, and allows me to successfully play the video in the reader.
>
> So I want XEP to be able to embed the video the way Acrobat Pro 9 
> does.  I think I'm missing some crucial detail.
>
> -- 
> Bob Stayton
> Sagehill Enterprises
> bobs at sagehill.net  <mailto:bobs at sagehill.net>
>
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