[Tex/LaTex] embedded video working on ubuntu (only pdfpc) but not in windows (adobe reader)

beamermultimedia

I use the following code to embed videos into my beamer presentation (shamelessly stolen of course):

 \newcommand{\fullFrameMovie}[4][loop]
{
    {
        \setbeamercolor{background canvas}{bg=black}

        \frame[plain]
        {
            \begin{textblock*}{\paperwidth}(0\paperwidth,0\paperheight)
            \centering
            \vbox to 0.95\paperheight {
                \vfil{
                    \href{run:#2?autostart&#1}{\includegraphics[width=\paperwidth,height=0.95\paperheight,keepaspectratio]{#3}}
                }
                \vfil
            }
            \end{textblock*}
            #4
        }
    }
}

\fullFrameMovie[]{videos/flockingvideo.mp4}{videos/flockingvideo.jpg}{\CopyrightText{Apollo 17, NASA}}

This runs smoothly with pdfpc on ubuntu 14.04, but evince complains about being unable to launch external application and adobe reader dc (windows 10), complains about being unable to open file videos/flockingvideo.mp4?autostart&loop.

The last one is quite understandable if the code I am using is not universally accepted to convey such information as looping and autostart. Maybe evince has the same problem as well.

I am quite happy, that I can present with my ubuntu, but the reality of things are, that I will probably have to present on windows machines usually, so it would be nice to have a pdf that really is "portable" as its name suggests 🙂 Is there a more universal way to specify autostart and loop? I could live without loop.

If there isn't one: does anybody know a solution to create pdf with videos that play both on linux (preferably with pdfpc) and on windows (i.e. adobe reader on windows)? Even better if it also works with lualatex and xelatex. Right now I know how to embed flash, that play nice on windows but not on linux and the above method, which doesn't play on windows.

Best Answer

In the github site of pdfpc (https://github.com/pdfpc/pdfpc) someone claims that compiling pdfpc with cygwin on a windows machine is possible. Look at the issue 106. In case the link does not work anymore I'll just copy and paste what he did. Ps I do not have a Windows machine, so maybe somebody else could confirm this? Copy and Paste below.

I just downloaded the tarball, extracted it and followed the installation instructions:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
make install

It was pretty straight forward by fixing each error that occured after using "cmake .." with downloading the missing dependency with cygwins setup.exe. But to shorten this process down for you, this is what I remember:

Compile Runtime Dependencies:

cmake
automake
make
gcc
gcc-c++
libstdc++-4.8-dev

PDFPC Compile Dependencies (use the -dev packages):

vala
gtk
gee
libpoppler
gstreamer
libgstinterfaces1.0-devel (has gstreamer.audio included)

You also need x11 (I installed the whole category with cywins setup.exe) and start it seperatly with cygwin in order to be able to create windows.

If someone tries this, you should add what I missed in my description or ask questions if you encounter any problems.

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