[thelist] Animation in a PDF

John Dowdell jdowdell at adobe.com
Thu Jun 1 13:55:03 CDT 2006


Dominick Cancilla wrote:
> I have a client who wants to put out a magazine in PDF format. One of the
> things he wants in the first issue is a demonstration of how similar two
> photographs are. He'd like to have the photos overlap, and a slider to
> change the transparency of the top photo.
> I believe that this can be done with Flash, but I haven't a clue how to get
> such a thing in a PDF file. Any ideas?

Recent versions of the free Adobe Reader (for viewing) and Adobe Acrobat 
Professional (for creating) include the ability to render SWF files. The 
workflow and documentation aren't as good as they will soon become, but 
the capability is in the world's deployed software today.

Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Professional, then call up the "Advanced 
Editing" toolbar from the View menu. There's a "movie" tool there with 
which you can draw out the square area in which the SWF or digital video 
file will display. A file-navigation dialog then pops up so that you can 
choose the file.

Because rendering this content relies on a local engine (whether the 
Adobe Flash Player, the Apple QuickTime plugin or other), there's a 
local dependency for such content. I think the whole area will improve 
in upcoming versions of the software, but there's a way to achieve such 
goals today.

jd





-- 
John Dowdell . Adobe Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA
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