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Is there any way to include an animated GIF directly in either PDFLaTeX or XeLaTeX? I realize the animate package can include animations in a PDF, but it doesn't support animated GIFs and you have to split them up manually into EPS or PNG files as far as I can tell.

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What is the problem with splitting the gif first? The manual part of the job is to enter something like `convert my.gif my.png' at the command line. – AlexG Nov 15 '10 at 12:34
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It's a pain in the butt! – ptomato Nov 15 '10 at 12:36
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In this case, I recommend to abstain from using computers. – AlexG Nov 15 '10 at 12:43
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There was really no reason for that. I think my question is perfectly legitimate - I'm asking whether there is any way to do it without splitting the GIF by hand. "No" is a perfectly reasonable answer. – ptomato Nov 15 '10 at 12:46
Also, when I entered my comment, I hadn't yet seen the edit to your comment where you said it was a one-line command. Let me point out though, that I'm stuck on a Windows machine where "convert" is a command to modify the file system on your drive. – ptomato Nov 15 '10 at 12:49
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Yes, use the movie15 package (in Latex). You will need to use a PDF viewer that supports animated content.

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What – I can't get animations on paper? They do have that in the Harry Potter movies. Why can't we? – Harald Hanche-Olsen Nov 15 '10 at 10:57
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@Harald: yes, paper is a sort of PDF viewer, but it's hard to find paper that supports animated content. I've had no personal experience with magic paper. I'd love to hear of other people's... – Charles Stewart Nov 15 '10 at 11:18
This seems to work, although it doesn't compile in XeLaTeX, only in PDFLaTeX. Unfortunately I haven't managed to find a PDF viewer that will show the animated GIF! Even Acrobat says there's no plugin for GIFs available. – ptomato Nov 15 '10 at 11:30
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@Charles: Oh, it's been around for a while. Remember the old comics when you need to flip quickly through the pages to see an animation effect? Now, I'm sure some journals would object heavily to my 1200+ page manuscript containing 60s of video @ 24 fps.. – Martin Tapankov Nov 15 '10 at 13:34
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@Martin: You are quite right! Someone must write a printer driver that creates flip books when given an animated GIF. – Charles Stewart Nov 16 '10 at 10:19
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