Video and Audio file formats supported in Acrobat 9 and Adobe Reader 9
What's covered
Video file formats supported
The following file formats can be placed in Acrobat 9 for playback in Adobe Reader 9.
| Format supported for: | Transcoding1 | URL streaming2 | Direct placement without transcoding2 | Legacy placement3 |
| Flash Video (.flv) | N/A | Yes | Yes | No |
| Microsoft AVI (.avi) | Yes | No | Yes, if H.264 encoded | Yes |
| QuickTime Movie (.mov) | Yes | No | Yes, if H.264 encoded | Yes |
| MPEG (.mp4, .m4v, .mpeg, .mpg) | Yes | Yes (.mp4 only) | Yes, if H.264 encoded | Yes (except .m4v) |
| Flash (.swf) | N/A | No | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Media (.wmv) | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Advanced Streaming Format (.asf) | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| 3GPP Movie (.3gp) | Yes | No | Yes, if H.264 encoded | No |
| RealMedia (.ram) | No | No | No | Yes |
1 Transcoding of video for direct playback in Adobe Reader 9 is supported in Acrobat 9 Pro Extended only.
2 Direct placement without transcoding is supported in both Acrobat 9 Pro and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended.
3 Playback is compatible with earlier versions of Adobe Reader, but requires that a compatible multimedia player is available when viewing.
Audio file formats supported
The following file formats can be placed for direct playback in Adobe Reader 9.
| Format supported for: | Direct placement without transcoding2 | Legacy placement3 |
| MP3 Audio (.mp3) | Yes | Yes |
| Audio Waveform (.wav) | No | Yes |
| Audio Interchange (.aif, .aiff) | No | Yes |
| MPEG Audio (.mpa, .m4a) | No | Yes |
| Windows Media audio (.wma) | No | Yes |
2 Direct placement without transcoding is supported in both Acrobat 9 Pro and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended.
3 Playback is compatible with earlier versions of Adobe Reader, but requires that a compatible multimedia player is available when viewing.
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