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I have an animation that I made with the animate package for a Beamer presentation. The animation creates a sequence of tikz drawings that change according to an animate variable. The result is an embedded JavaScript that plays in some PDF viewers but not others. E.g., Okular plays it if I choose autoplay, but it doesn't if I need to "click" on the animation - I can live with this on my computer. However, I would also like to run this animation on an Android tablet. The best Android compatible PDF viewer I have seen so far is Xodo, which I can make to run media9 embedded videos, but so far no luck with embedded JavaScript (even though the app claims it can play JavaScript).

My question, specifically, is how can I make a video out of an animate animation? This can also boil down to how can I generate a series of PNG images from an animate animation (I know how to continue with the video from there)?

I provide the wider context of the question above in case someone can suggest alternative strategies to do what I want.

Miguel
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    What about https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/136666/exporting-animation-created-with-animate-package , does it answer your question? – AlexG Dec 06 '20 at 10:04
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    Also, beamer-class documents with animate-type animations in SVG format might be an interesting option: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/235139/using-the-animate-package-without-adobe Embedding video is possible too, using pkg media4svg. All this plays nicely in Web browsers (preferably Chromium-based) on tablets. – AlexG Dec 06 '20 at 10:12
  • @AlexG I tried to export to SVG using the instructions on your documentation, but didn't manage, I'll give it another try (the frames seemed to move rightward and each new frame partly overlapped with the previous one, when played with Chromium). PDF would be preferable because of nice integration of stylus pen, especially in Xodo (this is very nice for teaching). – Miguel Dec 06 '20 at 10:36
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    @AlexG I managed to make a video with the export feature as explained in your answer linked in the first comment. Thanks for your help. Perhaps this can be flagged as duplicate? – Miguel Dec 06 '20 at 11:32
  • @AlexG This is a relatively unrelated question. I'm trying to switch from VPlayer.swf to StrobeMediaPlayback.swf and pdflatex is complaining that it can't find the Strobe... file (VPlayer.swf works fine). My installation is Texlive2019 on Ubuntu 20.04. Do you know what could be the problem? – Miguel Dec 06 '20 at 14:43
  • Trying to change players isn't worth the effort. Both need Flash and Flash is not available on mobile platforms and will be removed from desktops in less than four weeks anyway. Your pdf viewer just detects that some video is to be played and uses the platform specific player. – AlexG Dec 06 '20 at 15:00
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    Btw, when using a web browser for presenting, there are browser add-ons available that allow you to make annotations with a stylus. – AlexG Dec 06 '20 at 15:10
  • @AlexG I'll dig a bit into those. I have to say I'm getting tired of all the compatibility issues when using PDFs for presentations, so migrating to a more compatible solution that allows me to reuse all my existing LaTeX code would be very useful indeed. It sounds like web-based presentations might do the trick. – Miguel Dec 06 '20 at 16:20

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