Did anyone succeed in playing embedded movies inside Acrobat in Linux?

Question

Some time ago I asked this question How to include a movie in a PDF? Step by step instructions. (I tried everything documented there, and links therein. I can't find the combination of tools to be able to playback embedded movies in a PDF viewer in Linux.)

This time I am going to be more direct: Was anyone, with a certain combination of tools and viewer, able to create a PDF from TeX with an embedded movie and play it back in a Linux viewer (for example some version of Acrobat)?

If, so what package, tex version, acrobat version was used?

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EDIT 2014

Thanks to @AlexG, great advances have been made regarding the inclusion of movies and in particular the playback in Linux. It is just a pity that Acrobat for Linux is at its end of life (not so much for Adobe but because nobody is picking up the torch for embedded media).

This edit simply summarizes a working solution that is illustrated by defining a command \includemove[dimensions]{moviewithoutextension}, that produces movies that can be played back in Acrobat 9.4.1 (Linux), Acrobat for Windows and Mac and that fallbacks to external players (and a still picture) in other PDF viewers.

Assumptions:

1. You have a copy of jw-player 5.10 (not 5.9 or 6.x) in your local directory and it is named player.swf. (from here http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/browser/tags/mediaplayer-5.10, documentation here: http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw5/31138/configuration-options)
2. You have ffmpeg version 2.1.4.

3. You have a copy of your movie in the mp4 format. Any movie can be converted in this way

   ffmpeg -i $MYMOVIE.vid -vf scale="trunc(iw/2)*2:trunc(ih/2)*2" -c:v libx264 -profile:v high -pix_fmt yuv420p -g 25 -r 25 $MYMOVIE.mp4

   ffmpeg -i $MYMOVIE.vid -qscale 0 -vcodec libx264 -x264opts keyint=25 $MYMOVE.mp4

4. A preview image with the same name but extension png. This can be achieved by converting your movie in this way and taking an snapshot:

   ffmpeg -i $MYMOVIE.mp4 -ss 00:00:2.1 -f image2 -vframes 1 $MYMOVIE.png

5. [optional] A PDF image with the same name but pdf extension to replace the PNG preview in case Flash content is not active.

6. You are OK using the packages hyperref (and media9 of course).

7. [for playback] You have Acrobat 9.4.1 (for playback in Linux) or more modern versions in other systems.

8. [for playback] For other PDF viewers: the extension mp4 is associated with some application and the movie is distributed with the PDF.

Limitations (of my poor implementation, not of media9)

1. Only width and/or height can be specified as options.
2. No other player than jw-player can be used (options are hardcoded in the command definition).
3. It assumes a lot of defaults regarding the behavior of the embedded player.
4. [For fallback] The definition tries it best to have a nice fallback mode for other viewers, and you have to choose (see the code) between embedding the movie or having an external file.
5. [For playback] I don't know if it works in all viewers, it works at least in Acrobat 9.4.1 (Linux) and Evince 3.10.3 (Linux). I saw it work in Acrobat X in Windows and Mac after a "security message" confirmation.

Given this conditions, the following document that includes the definition of \includemovie and summarizes a working solution.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[noplaybutton]{media9}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage{attachfile2}

\newcommand{\includemovie}[2][]{
    \includemedia[
        #1,
        activate=pageopen,transparent,
        addresource=#2.mp4,addresource=#2.png,
        flashvars={
            file=#2.mp4&image=#2.png&
            stretching=uniform&start=0&
            screencolor=white& %improves render in light backgrounds
            controlbar.position=over&controlbar.idlehide=true&
            autostart=true&repeat=always&smoothing=true
            %&bufferlength=10 % may improve repetition of short videos
        }
    ]{ % for disabled content (in most cases this is fallback)
        \begin{tabular}{ll}
            \mbox{
            %   \href{run:#2.mp4} % for not embedded fallback
                \textattachfile[color={0 0 0}]{#2.mp4} % for embedded fallback
                {\texttt{|\kern-.23em>}} % poor play button
            } & \raisebox{-\height}{\includegraphics[#1]{#2}}
        \end{tabular}
    }{player.swf}
}

\begin{document}

\includemovie[width=5cm]{MYMOVIE} %no extension!

\end{document}

(note: you may benefit by producing JPEG snapshots, PNG are usually very big, sometimes as big as the whole movie)

Answer 1

Update

As of 2013/11/04, package media9 contains media player Flash components VPlayer9.swf and APlayer9.swf. They are compatible with the (somewhat outdated) Flash Player 9 plugin that is bundled with Adobe Reader for Linux 9.4.1 and can be used for producing PDF documents with embedded video (MP4/H.264) and audio (MP3) which target this particular Linux version of Adobe Reader.

Alternatively, any Flash-based media player found on the Web which is Flash-9 compatible and which can be configured via FlashVars could be used. (Though the number of such players should be decreasing with the advent of newer Flash versions.)

NB: Flash and media playback was dropped in more recent Readers. AR-9.4.1 is the last version on Linux which supports Flash.

Adobe Reader 9.4.1 for Linux can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.4.1/.

Example code using cube.mp4 and VPlayer9.swf from the media9 package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{media9}[2013/11/04]

\begin{document}

\includemedia[
  width=0.6\linewidth,height=0.6\linewidth,
  activate=pageopen,
  transparent,
  addresource=cube.mp4,
  flashvars={
    source=cube.mp4     % same path as in addresource!
   &loop=true           % loop video
   &scaleMode=letterbox % preserve aspect ratio
  }
]{}{VPlayer9.swf}

\end{document}

Answer 2

Update Thanks to @percusse for pointing out in his comment that the original answer was not the one the OP was asking for.

So I did a little searching and found this link. Basically, the workaround is,

1. Install Adobe Reader 9.4.1.
2. Install flashmovie or copy it to your source folder (especially the player_flv_maxi.swf)

3. Write \includepackage{hyperref} and \includepackage{flashmovie} in your preamble. A minimal working environment would be:

   \documentclass{article}
   
   \includepackage{hyperref}
   \incldepackage{flashmovie}
   
   \begin{document}
   
   \flashmovie[width=12cm,height=8cm,engine=flv-player,auto=1]{movie.flv}
   
   \end{document}
   

It seems that, in Linux, you can only get embedded videos in Acrobat with Acrobat version 9.4.1. (Why this is, I don't know yet.) You will also need to install ffmpeg to convert your videos to flv

I downloaded the sample text-flv.tex file from the link. How flashmovie works is summarized in this file.

I can verify the claim of that the movie cannot play on the output pdf on my Adobe Reader with version 9.4.7. Opening the pdf gives a message A 3d data parsing error has ocurred. I can also verify that it works like a charm in Adobe Reader 9.4.1.

BTW, I have TeX version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13.

Update: If you are not after embeding First, make sure that you have installed all required packages to run your movie format. You will need to load the package movie15, which comes with TeXLive 2012. The manual says that this package is already obsolete and that you should consider using movie9 instead, which is in ctan but not in TeXLive2012. I used movie15 in this answer.

Try the following MWE:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{movie15}

\begin{document}

    \begin{figure}[ht]
    \includemovie[poster,text={\small(Loading Video...)}]{3cm}{2cm}{movie.mp4}
    \end{figure}

\end{document}

The poster option inserts the first frame of the movie. The text option appears before the movie is loaded into your pdf viewer. 3cm and 2cm are the width and height of the frame and movie.mp4 is the name of your movie.

Run pdflatex movie.tex where movie.tex is your tex file. I am using Ubuntu 12.04 and I use evince 3.4 to view the pdf. Just type evince movie.pdf in your terminal. Click on the frame to play the movie. The movie will open with your default movie viewer.

I haven't tried movie9 though.

Update This is in response to User 17791. My previous comment to his answer was deleted when the question was edited by moderator. Here it is, @User17791:

pdfTeX 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012)
kpathsea version 6.1.0
Copyright 2012 Peter Breitenlohner (eTeX)/Han The Thanh (pdfTeX).
There is NO warranty.  Redistribution of this software is
covered by the terms of both the pdfTeX copyright and
the Lesser GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file
named COPYING and the pdfTeX source.
Primary author of pdfTeX: Peter Breitenlohner (eTeX)/Han The Thanh (pdfTeX).
Compiled with libpng 1.5.10; using libpng 1.5.10
Compiled with zlib 1.2.7; using zlib 1.2.7
Compiled with xpdf version 3.03

Below are two snapshots of my desktop with a movie being played in Acrobat 9.4.1. (It's a video of a ritual dance here in Baguio City.)

Answer 3

I was trying to do same as you and this worked to me

\documentclass[unknownkeysallowed]{beamer}
\mode<presentation>
\usepackage{beamerthemesplit}
\usepackage{multimedia}

\begin{document} 

\begin{frame}[allowframbreaks]

\centering

\movie[height = 6cm,width = 6cm,showcontrols] {}{QuantumHallEffectExp.mp4}
\end{frame} 

\end{document} 

And in order to see what was embedded it is necessary to use Okular in presentation mode.

Answer 4

I'm using Linux, and this works for me:

First I have to download movie15_dvipdfmx.sty and rename it to movie15.sty, and put it in the same directory as my .tex file.

Then:

\usepackage[dvipdfmx]{movie15}
[....]

\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\includemovie[inline=false,text={\includegraphics[scale=0.25]{play-movie.png}}]{}{}{movie.mp4}
\end{figure}

In Linux, I can open the PDF with the viewer evince, and the image can be clicked and the movie will play in a separate window.