Using Media9 with Windows and Minimizing the size of the video

Question

I got the following minimum working example from: latex beamer: \includemedia won't play video

I use Windows and have Adobe X. I can get the MWE to compile, but in the .pdf, I cannot get it to play unless I use the VPlayer option as below and make a few additional modifications as in the media9 manual.

In addition, I am wondering whether there is a way to include it as apart of the cover slide, and also in a way such that it is barely (ideally almost not at all) visible?

I suspect that APlayer.swf might be preferred but I cannot get that working. Also, I imagine that I'd like to not use \pagewidth, but something much smaller.

\documentclass{beamer}
 \usetheme{Singapore}
 \usepackage{media9}

 \title{TITLE}
 \author{AUTHOR}
 \institute{INSTITUTE}
 \date{DATE}

\begin{document}

 \addtocounter{framenumber}{-1}
 \frame{\titlepage}

 \begin{frame}{Title}

 \includemedia[
 width=\paperwidth,
 height=0.7\linewidth,
  activate=pageopen,
 addresource=movie.mp4,
 flashvars={source=movie.mp4
 &loop=true
 &scaleMode=letterbox
   }
 ]{}{VPlayer.swf}

 \end{frame}
\end{document}

Answer 1

Just remove the height and width options from \includemedia. Since there is no text-box argument (last-but-one argument), the video box will have zero size and be invisible. In order to be able to start playing the sound, you will have to specify a combination of activate=pageopen option (done already) and autoPlay=true FlashVar.

APlayer.swf can only play MP3 sound files.

If you want the sound to be played on the cover slide, then you will have to insert it there: \frame{\titlepage\includemedia...}.

Video and sound files are embedded as part of the PDF and don't need be distributed along with the PDF.

Slow down of page transitions may occur because AdobeReader has to uncompress and load the embedded media files and players while opening a page with embedded media.

If you just want to start playback of a sound file when the PDF is opened and let it play for the remaining time of the presentation, embed it on the cover page (see above) and use option deactivate=onclick. This suppresses un-loading of the media when the cover page is left during the presentation.