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This is a common question but frankly, there seems not to be an easy successful way to do it. All the resources that I found do not work. Including, I cannot reproduce videos in PDF files by Okular on my Fedora 30. Can you folks write down a "definite" concise and clear guide, if possible? I know that this might be subjected to the Linux Distro. So in my case I am working in Fedora 30.

These are the resources I looked into:

  • Andrew J. Berry's original guide (refers to use Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.4.1 -- dropped it: too obsolete).
  • Andrew J. Berry's new guide (a headache)
  • SE classic page 1 (does not provide a working solution)
  • SE classic page 2 (refers to media9 package which again seems to work with AR 9.4.1 which makes a joke to install a 10-year-old software on Linux 2020 that Adobe even discontinued, and also relies on the Flash plugin which is going to be discontinued this year).
  • Overleaf example (which does not work for me, despite following the instructions on the link).

For speculators: Why something so fundamental like including multimedia and videos in a PDF presentation, has to be such a nightmare in Beamer (under Linux)?

maurizio
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    Currently, the most portable way to have presentations with embedded multimedia is the SVG format. SVG with multimedia can be viewed in a variety of Web browsers that are available across all popular operating systems and platforms. I am about finalizing a multimedia inclusion package for the dvisvgm back-end. – AlexG Apr 04 '20 at 10:27
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    The problem is not the distribution or Latex, the problem is the reader. As far as I know, only the Adobe reader is capable to reproduce multimedia embedded in a PDF (this may be a licensing issue, hence no other reader do that). So, of you don't want to deal with Acrobat reader you better find a different way to create your presentation. – Salatiel Garcia Apr 04 '20 at 10:51
  • @SalatielGarcia : That's why, as I said before, SVG might be a good substitute for PDF, in particular for presentation-type documents. Full-featured web browsers a ubiquitous, as compared to PDF viewers. – AlexG Apr 05 '20 at 09:42
  • So the conclusion I am taking out of this is: leave it and plan your PDF without videos or multimedia if you are working with Beamer on Linux? – maurizio Apr 05 '20 at 09:52
  • Once the promised pkg is ready, beamer-class documents in SVG format with embedded videos can easily produced and viewed under Linux. Pkg animate already supports SVG, as can be seen here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/235180 . – AlexG Apr 05 '20 at 10:10
  • @AlexG It is promising. But there are some issues: animate allows me to import SVG "movies" as if I were building GIFs, but if I want to include an MP4 file or an audio file, there is no way that I know of to convert them into SVG. – maurizio Apr 06 '20 at 21:04
  • @maurizio : The pkg is ready and will be available in TeXLive-2020 within the next days: https://ctan.org/pkg/media4svg – AlexG Apr 10 '20 at 18:22
  • @AlexG Thanks. I am going to test it. – maurizio Apr 10 '20 at 18:34
  • And how about this (https://pdfpc.github.io/) – Pablo González L Apr 15 '20 at 21:13
  • @PabloGonzálezL it works. But you folks should mention that there is a restriction on the type of file to embed, which is inherited by the multimedia package. Only if I have my videos in MPEG-2 then I can reproduced them. – maurizio Jun 06 '20 at 19:14
  • @AlexG I downloaded the media4svg from CTAN but it seems bugged. Or some of my packages are clashing. Where can I send you a log so maybe you can help me figure out how to make it work? – maurizio Jun 06 '20 at 19:21
  • @maurizio Would you mind asking a new question, with a compilable example added? Would be great, as it would be the first media4svg question on TeXSX. It would perhaps help to popularize it somewhat. – AlexG Jun 06 '20 at 20:16
  • @AlexG https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/548137/compilation-error-embedding-figures-by-media4svg-in-beamer – maurizio Jun 06 '20 at 21:25
  • @maurizio I think the only solution for the various video formats would be to use Adobe Acrobat :( ... converting them or using 'media4svg' is the best "multi-platform" option at the moment – Pablo González L Jun 08 '20 at 22:30

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In the case of Fedora (30,31,32), this has worked for me:

Install pdfpc

sudo dnf -y install pdfpc

Check if you have installed gstreamer1-plugins-good-gtk, If not, you install it:

sudo dnf -y install gstreamer1-plugins-good-gtk

You can try it out by downloading an example with movies from https://pdfpc.github.io/

Using TeXLive 2020 to work for me.

PS: It also works in Win10 :)

Pablo González L
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