Beamer presentation to a4 printable

Question

Hi I'm going to graduate in physics on tuesday and I'd love to have a printable nice formatted copy of my presentation. I tried adding

\usepackage{pgfpages}
\pgfpagesuselayout{resize to}[a4paper,border shrink=5mm,landscape]

but compiling via pdflatex on OSx doesn't render anything more than the regular beamer presentation I made. What am I doing wrong?

\documentclass{beamer}

\usepackage[italian]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{enumerate}
\usepackage[round]{natbib}
    \bibliographystyle{chicago}
\usepackage{graphicx}
    \graphicspath{ {img/} }

\usepackage{pgfpages}
\pgfpagesuselayout{resize to}[a4paper,border shrink=5mm,landscape]


%%% Personalizzazione del layout---articolata su cinque livelli.
\usetheme{Berkeley}         % layout complessivo. 
\useoutertheme{sidebar}     % layout esterno.

%%% Titolo e autore.
\title{*}
\subtitle{*}
\author{*}
\institute{*}
\date{*}
\logo{\includegraphics[width=15mm]{*}}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\begin{document}
blabla
\end{document}

The last slide is a reference one

\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{Bibliografia}
    \tiny
        \nocite{*}

    \bibliography{tesi}

\end{frame}

Answer 1

Warning: totally opinion based.

• I would definitely go with something in portrait format. This is less cumbersome to turn pages.

• as beamer slides are designed to be read from some distance, the font size etc. is normally larger than in normal printing. To make reading more pleasant, I suggest multiple slides per page. The two in the example below might even be too large, maybe even 6 ones in two columns can fit a page.

• If you are going to have the pages in a glued binding, remember to have a bit more space on the inner margin. The example below adds 0.7cm, but this highly depends on the exact binding technique, what paper is used and how many pages there are. Best would be to talk to your book binder for a good value.

• If you are going for double sided printing things gets more complicated, as the binding offset has to be placed alternating on the left and right side. Other documentclasses have twosided options, maybe it would be easier to set up a new document and include the slides there as images. Also I find that in twosided printing the margins should be asymmetric with a smaller inner margin (as the margins from both sides are besides each other) and bigger outer margins.

• last but not least: leave enough white space! If in doubt, make the margins even bigger.

(The layout is based on Is there a way to get two pages in one with LaTeX?)

\documentclass{beamer}

\usepackage{pgfpages}

\makeatletter
\define@key{pgfpagesuselayoutoption}{horizontal shift}%
{\def\pgfpageoptionhshift{#1}}
\define@key{pgfpagesuselayoutoption}{vertical shift}%
{\def\pgfpageoptionvshift{#1}}
\makeatother

\pgfpagesdeclarelayout{2 on 1 shifted}
{
    \edef\pgfpageoptionheight{\the\paperwidth} % landscaped by default
    \edef\pgfpageoptionwidth{\the\paperheight}
    \def\pgfpageoptionborder{0pt}
    \def\pgfpageoptionfirstshipout{1}
    \def\pgfpageoptionhshift{0pt}
    \def\pgfpageoptionvshift{0pt}
}
{
    \pgfpagesphysicalpageoptions
    {%
        logical pages=2,%
        physical height=\pgfpageoptionheight,%
        physical width=\pgfpageoptionwidth,%
        current logical shipout=\pgfpageoptionfirstshipout%
    }
    \ifdim\paperheight>\paperwidth\relax
    % put side-by-side
    \pgfpageslogicalpageoptions{1}
    {%
        border shrink=\pgfpageoptionborder,%
        resized width=.5\pgfphysicalwidth,%
        resized height=\pgfphysicalheight,%
        center=\pgfpoint{.25\pgfphysicalwidth+\pgfpageoptionhshift}{.5\pgfphysicalheight+\pgfpageoptionvshift}%
    }%
    \pgfpageslogicalpageoptions{2}
    {%
        border shrink=\pgfpageoptionborder,%
        resized width=.5\pgfphysicalwidth,%
        resized height=\pgfphysicalheight,%
        center=\pgfpoint{.75\pgfphysicalwidth+\pgfpageoptionhshift}{.5\pgfphysicalheight+\pgfpageoptionvshift}%
    }%
    \else
    % stack on top of one another
    \pgfpageslogicalpageoptions{1}
    {%
        border shrink=\pgfpageoptionborder,%
        resized width=\pgfphysicalwidth,%
        resized height=.5\pgfphysicalheight,%
        center=\pgfpoint{.5\pgfphysicalwidth+\pgfpageoptionhshift}{.75\pgfphysicalheight+\pgfpageoptionvshift}%
    }%
    \pgfpageslogicalpageoptions{2}
    {%
        border shrink=\pgfpageoptionborder,%
        resized width=\pgfphysicalwidth,%
        resized height=.5\pgfphysicalheight,%
        center=\pgfpoint{.5\pgfphysicalwidth+\pgfpageoptionhshift}{.25\pgfphysicalheight+\pgfpageoptionvshift}%
    }%
    \fi    
}

\pgfpagesuselayout{2 on 1 shifted}[a4paper,border shrink=12mm, horizontal shift=0.7cm]

\usetheme{Berkeley}         
\useoutertheme{sidebar}    

\begin{document}

    \frame{frame1}
    \frame{frame2}

\end{document}