Replacing movie15 with media9 in powerdot presentations

Question

Last year, I could make movie15 work in my powerdot presentations, through the dvi2ps ps2pdf route. I re-visited recently and could not get the movies (*.wma) to appear anymore. I spent the better part of two days trying to understand media9 as its replacement, and I can get the two to work independently, but not together (At least not real, pretty like). Has anyone successfully accomplished this, or is there a reason this will probably not work?

I converted my WMA to MP4, and if I go the dvipdf route, using media9 in either an article class or a powerdot class, I get the movie to show up correctly, however, while the article class "looks" right, the powerdot class PDF only covers the bottom 1/4 of the pdf page.

If I go the dvi2ps and ps2pdf (GS 9.05) the powerdot and the article class both look right (takes the entire page), but the movie doesn't show up in either one. I can post specifics, but I thought I would get the big picture answer that it is indeed possible. I've tried most of the suggestions I have found (i.e. -dNOSAFER), but no luck!

Response to Alexander: Excellent, at least now I know someone has it working and its just a matter of the right format/order of 1s and 0s. I have a pretty similar setup, and when I ran your code, I got a:

'powerdot-default.ps' not found. 

So I added a style option:

\documentclass[style=simple]{powerdot} 

and then got the error:

! Package babel Error: You haven't loaded the option english yet. 

So I added: \documentclass[style=simple, language=english]{powerdot}... (Just in case anyone receives these errors, a work around for me until I find the right problem).

Finally I got a StrobeMediaPlayback.swf not found, probably because I do not have it installed (did it come with v0.3?) I just have the original VPlayer.swf. So I will try and find StrobeMediaPlayback.swf since I am still in the same boat, the PDF looks great (formating wise), but the movie still is not there... do I have to manually update to v0.3? I thought I was setup for automatic updating, but maybe not.

Could I ask what your switches/parameters are for dvi2ps and ps2pdf?

Answer 1

I wouldn't use movie15 any longer. Once you have all your video files converted to or rebuilt as MP4, media9 should do. The example below using the powerdot class and media9 (v0.3, uploaded yesterday) worked for me. The video file was copied from $TEXMF/doc/latex/media9/files into the working directory. ps2pdf option -dNOSAFER is not required with media9.

\documentclass{powerdot}
\usepackage[UKenglish]{babel} %media9.sty needs it, language doesn't matter
\usepackage{media9}

\begin{document}

\begin{slide}{Embedded video}

  \includemedia[
    activate=pageopen,
    width=200pt, height=150pt,
    addresource=random.mp4,
    flashvars={
       src=random.mp4
      &loop=true
    }
  ]{}{StrobeMediaPlayback.swf}

\end{slide}

\end{document}