Beamer multiinclude delay

Question

I'm trying to do the following in beamer:

\begin{itemize}
   \item<+-> a
   \item<+-> b
   \item<+-> c
   \item<+-> d
   \only<1-4>{\includegraphics{blah-1}}%
   \only<5->{\multiinclude[<+>]{format=pdf,start=2}{blah}}
\end{itemize}

The idea is that the figure blah-1.pdf should be displayed the entire time the first four bullet points are revealed. After that point, the figures blah-2.pdf, blah-3.pdf, blah-4.pdf, and so on should be displayed.

This works fine at first: transitions 1-4 reveal the list items while displaying the figure blah-1.pdf, but when I get to transition 5, the figure that gets displayed is blah-6.pdf. That is, the multiinclude starts counting from 2 at the first transition even though it's only first used on transition 5.

I know there are some hacks I could use (like hardcoding the includegraphics or creating dummy images blah-2.pdf,...,blah-5.pdf) but I intend to use this pattern a lot, so I wonder if there's a clean way to do it?

Answer 1

The syntax of \multiinclude should be \multiinclude[<+>][format=png,start=2]{...} instead of \multiinclude[<+>]{format=pdf,start=2}{...}. With this syntax the animation starts with the second image:

\documentclass{beamer}

\usepackage{xmpmulti}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
\begin{itemize}
   \item<+-> a
   \item<+-> b
   \item<+-> c
   \item<+-> d
   \only<1-4>{\includegraphics{pic-1}}%
   \only<5->{%
    \multiinclude[<+>][format=png,start=2]{pic}
   }
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}

\end{document}