How to include an animation produced by Mathematica to a powerdot slide set?

Question

Studying the documentation of media9 package left me with the impression that it should be possible to embed an SWF-video into a slide set to be shown by Adobe Reader. Unfortunately that document contained no examples that I could find, so I'm half-guessing the syntax.

This is the first time I'm trying to embed a video, so don't assume that I know anything.

Here's the source code:

\documentclass{powerdot}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
%\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[finnish]{babel}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}
%\usepackage{psfrag}
\usepackage{media9}
\begin{document}
\begin{slide}{Animation}
\includemedia[
      width=250pt,
      activate=pageopen,
      addresource=ellipsi.swf,
      flashvars={source=ellipsi.swf}
    ]{}{VPlayer.swf}
\end{slide}
\end{document}

The file ellipsi.swf was exported from Mathematica9, and resides in the same directory as this TeX-source.

System: MikTeX ver 2.9, WinEdt ver 7.0, Windows 7

When I click TeX->LaTeX, this compiles all right. The DVI->PS conversion also goes smoothly. But clicking PS2PDF causes a slide of errors starting with

Error: /undefinedresult in --currentpoint

and ending with

MiKTeX GPL Ghostscript 9.05: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1.

Usually I include psfrag substitutions in still images, so that's why I'm used to going the DVI->PS->PDF route. I also tried a direct DVI2PDF, but it gave

** WARNING ** 50 memory objects still allocated
You may want to report this to [email protected]

Mind you that last message does not concern me much, because I always get that if I hit DVI2PDF, usually with a lower number of allocated memory objects though.

Answer 1

1. VPlayer.swf is only for playing back MP4/H.264 video files and provides some basic interactivity (play/pause/resume, seeking, speaker volume level) via mouse-click, keyboard, and additional buttons (to be inserted with the \mediabutton command).

   If you have an swf file with embedded video like your ellipsi.swf you must embed this one as the main file, that is, instead of VPlayer.swf, not as a resource. But then you will only have the interactivity that ellipsi.swf provides. I don't know anything about the Flash files Mathematica produces.

2. List item Error: /undefinedresult in --currentpoint.

   Since you don't specify a poster text or image (empty argument {} before the last {VPlayer.swf}), you must provide width and height of the video as command options.

Thus, a working example would be:

\documentclass{powerdot}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
%\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
%\usepackage[finnish]{babel}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}
%\usepackage{psfrag}
\usepackage{media9}

\begin{document}
\begin{slide}{Animation}
\includemedia[
  width=250pt, height=200pt,
  activate=pageopen,
]{}{ellipsi.swf}
\end{slide}
\end{document}

However, your best bet would be to produce an MP4+H.264 video file, e. g. using FFmpeg, and play it back with VPlayer.swf.