[Tex/LaTex] Beamer: PDF presentation viewer to play embedded videos and show elapsed time

beamermedia9tdclockviewerswindows

I have been suffering from finding a PDF presentation viewer for beamer output on Windows that can play embedded videos (by media9 package) and show the elapsed presentation time.

I have tried the following:

Adobe Reader with tdclock package:

  • Pros: plays videos and loads tdclock properly
  • Cons: sluggish and crashes frequently

Foxit Reader with tdclock package:

  • Pros: smooth viewer and plays videos

  • Cons: can't load tdclock clock/stopwatch despite enabling javascript

Impressive:

  • Pros: fast and has internal clock

  • Cons: can't play embedded videos

Dual-Screen PDF Viewer:

  • Pros: very fast, has internal clock and dual screen support

  • Cons: can't play embedded videos

Is there any other solution that can properly play embedded videos and show elapsed presentation time flawlessly and smoothly on Windows?

P.S. when I mean tdclock javascript is not loaded, those empty red boxes show up instead of the clock/stopwatch,

enter image description here

and when embedded video can't be loaded, a white page shows up.

Best Answer

I think I figured out what made tdclock not load properly when using Foxit Reader.

I tried to follow the same way in this answer to add a clock in the footline instead of headline. However, it works only in Adobe Reader and failed in Foxit Reader (I don't understand why).

It seemed that the proper way to load tdclock clock/stopwatch is to place \initclock after \begin{document} as said in the package documentation not inside the preamble definition of headline/footline.

5 Macros

The clock must be initialized with \initclock, usually at the beginning of the document, after \begin{document}.

Before testing the following MWE in Foxit Reader, make sure you use the last version of free Foxit Reader 8.0.0.624 as of today. After installation, you may need to mark the document file/folder as trusted in Preferences > Security and make sure that javascript is enabled in Preferences > Trust Manager.

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\usepackage[font=Times,
timeinterval=30,
timeduration=20,
timewarningfirst=75,
timewarningsecond=90,
colorwarningfirst=blue,
colorwarningsecond=red]{tdclock}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}{%
    \hspace*{2ex}%
    \scriptsize{%
        \cronominutes~-~\tdhours\hspace{0.1ex}:\hspace*{0.5ex}\tdminutes%
    }%
    \hfill\insertframenumber/\inserttotalframenumber
    \hspace*{2ex}%
}

\author{Author}
\title{Title}

\begin{document}

    \frame[plain]{\maketitle\initclock}

    \begin{frame}
        \lipsum[1]
    \end{frame}

    \begin{frame}
        \lipsum[2]
    \end{frame}

\end{document}

It seems that Foxit Reader is the best choice for me to smoothly view a presentation with embedded videos and tdclock objects.

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