Beamer: how to skip only some `notes' frames

Question

I'd like to hand out a printout of some slides, including some printed notes and a bit of space for handwriting. The following is (more or less) working:

\documentclass[handout,notes]{beamer}
  \usepackage{pgfpages}

  \pgfpagesuselayout{2 on 1}
  \AtBeginSection[]{\frame{\Huge\insertsectionhead}}
  \AtBeginNote{Notes:\par}

  \makeatletter
    \def\beamer@framenotesbegin{% at beginning of slide
      \gdef\beamer@noteitems{}%
      \gdef\beamer@notes{{}}% used to be totally empty.
    }
  \makeatother

\begin{document}
  \section{1st section}
  \frame{The first slide\note[item]{With a note}}
  \frame{The second, and last, slide}
\end{document}

The \makeatletter...\makeatother fragment makes every normal frame being followed by a notes frame. With pgfpages, each frame and its note frame are printed on the same page. Finally, each section gets its own frame (\AtBeginSection).

But I don't want the section frame to be followed by a notes frame, as is currently happening. I've unsucessfully tried to:

• Make \makeatletter...\makeatother check (with \ifx...?) whether it's being used from within a normal frame, or not. The problem is that I don't know what condition could be used to tell if this is a normal page, a sectioning one, or whatever.

• Force, with pgfpages, a blank page; thus, the section frame and the blank page will be printed on the same page.

Some more details: I'm using org-mode within Emacs to write the slides. Also, I'm using Beamer's command \AtBeginNote to heavily customize the appearance of the notes frames (thus, I can't simply drop the \AtBeginNote line).

Any ideas? Many thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The following basically takes the idea of Gonzalo, but puts everything you need into the \AtBeginSection command:

\documentclass[handout,notes]{beamer}
\usepackage{pgfpages}

\pgfpagesuselayout{2 on 1}
\AtBeginSection[]{\setbeameroption{hide notes}\frame{\Huge\insertsectionhead}\frame{}\setbeameroption{show notes}}
\AtBeginNote{Notes:\par}

\makeatletter
\def\beamer@framenotesbegin{% at beginning of slide
  \gdef\beamer@noteitems{}%
  \gdef\beamer@notes{{}}% used to be totally empty.
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\section{1st section}
\frame{The first slide\note[item]{With a note}}
\frame{The second, and last, slide}

\end{document}

Answer 2

You can hide the notes before the section frame and then show them again:

\documentclass[handout,notes]{beamer}
\usepackage{pgfpages}

\pgfpagesuselayout{2 on 1}
\AtBeginSection[]{\setbeameroption{hide notes}\frame{\Huge\insertsectionhead}}
\AtBeginNote{Notes:\par}

\makeatletter
\def\beamer@framenotesbegin{% at beginning of slide
  \gdef\beamer@noteitems{}%
  \gdef\beamer@notes{{}}% used to be totally empty.
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\section{1st section}\frame{}
\setbeameroption{show notes}
\frame{The first slide\note[item]{With a note}}
\frame{The second, and last, slide}

\end{document}