33. Create a Multimedia Link Before You Begin  32 About Interactivity
See Also  34 Create a Navigation Link 35 Create a Menu Action Link 37 Edit a Link 39 Incorporate Multimedia in a Presentation
Acrobat allows you to create links in your PDF document that will play sound or movie clips. Readers simply click the link and they can hear a song, listen to voice instructions or view an instructional movie clip. By default, Acrobat embeds the sound or movie clip into the PDF document so you don't have to worry about sending the file along with the PDF to readers, but keep in mind that adding a sound or movie clip can greatly increase the file size of your PDF document ( especially movie clips, which can be much larger than sound files). | 1. | Create a Link From the Tools menu, under the Advanced Editing submenu, select the Link Tool . While the Link Tool is selected, the cursor becomes a cross-hair and any preexisting links become visible. Press and drag the cross-hairs to create a rectangle at the location you want to create a link. This displays the Create Link dialog box, which allows you to change the appearance of a link and its action.      | | 2. | Select the Link Appearance
The area of a link can be defined by either a visible or an invisible rectangle. This is the area the user can click to activate the link. Obviously, you should have some indicator for the viewer that there is a link he can click, so if you choose an invisible rectangle, make sure there is some graphic or text to indicate a link.
If you choose to make the link visible, select Visible Rectangle for Link Type . You can then change the rectangle's highlight style, which is a simple change of appearance of the link area, including line thickness , line style, and color , when the viewer clicks it. If you choose to make the link invisible, the Link Type needs to be set to Invisible Rectangle .
| | 3. | Select the Link Action
After you have chosen how you want the link to look, you need to set the link action. In the Link Action section, select the Custom Link option; then click the Next button. Acrobat will bring up the Link Properties dialog box. Click the Actions tab and select either Play a Sound or Play Media from the Select Action drop-down menu. (There are two Play Media options. Select the Acrobat 5 Compatible option if you are sending files to users of Acrobat 5; otherwise , select the Acrobat 6 Compatible option, which supports a wider variety of video file formats and features.)
| | 4. | Select the Multimedia File
After you've clicked the Add button, navigate to the movie or sound file you want to add. Select the file. After clicking the Close button, press the Esc key to return to the normal viewing mode (with the browse tool as the active tool). Click your newly created multimedia link to test it.
| TIP  | To edit a multimedia link, select the Link tool and double-click the link you want to edit. Under the Actions section in the Link Properties dialog box, select the action and click the Edit button. Navigate to the new sound or movie clip and click the Select button to change the multimedia file. Click the Close button to finish the task. |
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