Beamer, notes on the second screen and media9 problem

Question

When one is asking beamer to generate notes on a second screen, a small version of the slide is also produced.

This is troublesome when it comes to a slide containing a video. In my case (movie9 + Acrobat Reader), the video is not placed at the correct location and is partially visible on both screens.

Is there a way to exclude the movie elements from the second screen slide thumbnail?

Here is minimum example of the issue:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{graphics}
\usepackage{media9}
\usepackage{pgfpages}
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen}
\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
  \includemedia[%
    addresource=sample_mpeg4.mp4,
    height=\paperheight,
        width=\paperwidth,
        flashvars={
          flv=sample_mpeg4.mp4
          &autoPlay=true
  }]{foo bar}{player_flv_maxi.swf}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

You can find the sample video on the Apple website (3rd one).

I compile the document with pdflatex and view it using Acrobat Reader (9.4.1) on Ubuntu 10.04.

Answer 1

There are two problems with your example:

1. As Beamer frames have default left and right margins, a video resized to the width of \pagewidth will extend beyond the right edge of the frame into the second screen which is reserved for the notes. This is not a media9 specific issue as any box with this horizontal dimension would behave similarly.

   If you really want to have a video box filling up the whole frame it must be centred within the frame. The macro \centerline{...} is an option.

2. The beamer option show notes on second screen tries to copy a rescaled version of the video into the thumbnail image at the top right corner of the notes screen. A video box is an interactive PDF element similar to a hyperlink. However, rescaling of such elements does not work for technical reasons. See section 58 of the PGF manual for details.

   Therefore, repeating the video on the notes screen must be suppressed. This can be done using the [typeset second] frame option and by enabling the beamer option second mode text on second screen.

Here is a possible solution:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{graphics}
\usepackage{media9}
\usepackage{pgfpages}

\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen}
\setbeameroption{second mode text on second screen}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
Bla, bla. 
\note{This is shown on the right.}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}[typeset second]
\only<second:0>{\centerline{%
  \includemedia[%
    height=\paperheight,
    width=\paperwidth,
    addresource=random.mp4,
    flashvars={
      flv=random.mp4
     &autoplay=1
    },
    activate=pageopen
  ]{}{player_flv_maxi.swf}
}}  
\note{Note that the notes screen does not include the video. See section 85 of pgfmanual.pdf.}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}
Some more words.
\note{This is shown on the right.}
\end{frame}

\end{document}