Multimedia Documents Scotland

Adobe PDF (Portable Document Files) are a worldwide standard format used daily by most companies and individuals. Our experts can add an extra dimension to your documents by adding in high-quality multimedia content.

Multimedia PDF files are standalone documents which do not require the reader to download any additional plug-ins or have Internet access to view them. All that is required is a fairly up-to-date version of the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (Version 9) to view the multimedia content. The documents are also backwards-compatible. Even if the end-user has an older version of Adobe Reader installed they will still be able to see the main document, with your choice of image replacing the multimedia content.

Four basic types of multimedia content can be added to your documents:

• Video content is ideal for short video clips to advertise a particular product or service in a PDF brochure. It can also be used to demonstrate how a technical part or process works in your internal training documents.

• Audio content is good for including podcasts, personal messages or music clips in your documents. The size of an audio file is much smaller than video, and therefore significantly longer clips can be included.

• Interactive Flash allows users to interact with your document by embedding a Flash module. Some of our clients have had their PowerPoint presentations converted into interactive Flash versions and included the new file in their PDF documents. This innovation allowed customers to both see and control the slides in the file. Other businesses have included an interactive photo gallery in their PDF documents, allowing customers to choose which photographs of their products to view.

• Interactive 3D is the most impressive use and lets your reader interact in real time with an embedded 3D model or environment. It’s also good for showing off new products, or perhaps letting users wander through a virtual environment.  This feature is particularly useful for estate agents, hotels or venues where a ‘walk-though’ might be needed.

In addition to the above multimedia options, many other advanced capabilities can be added to your standard PDF documents. For example, ‘smart’ forms can be created to process user data automatically before sending it to your own server. In plain English this means that you can send clients a PDF sales brochure with a built-in order form containing a full product price list. After selecting the products they want, the ‘smart’ form automatically creates a sales invoice and sends this data to your company ready to be processed further.

If you’d like to know more about any of these features or how multimedia and interactive PDF documents could help your particular business, just ask!