beamerpaper-size
When I use the beamer class, the resulted pdf document has very small pages:
What can I do in order to create A4 sized slides?
The beginning of the latex document is:
\documentclass[xcolor=dvipsnames]{beamer}
\usetheme{Madrid}
\usecolortheme[named=ForestGreen]{structure}
The reported size in adobe reader is 5.04" x 3.78"
Werner's example shows a problem with the beamer class, namely that the class doesn't redefine \frametitle in handout mode, which is really annoying. I always recommend you do something along the following lines. (Alternatively you may write \frametitle<handout>{...}, which is really cumbersome.)
\newif\ifmybeamer
%\mybeamertrue
\ifmybeamer
\documentclass[Madrid]{beamer}
\else
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{beamerarticle}
\makeatletter
\def\frametitle{%
\@ifnextchar<%
{\@frametitle@lt}%
{\@frametitle@lt<>}%
}
\def\@frametitle@lt<#1>#2{}
\makeatother
\fi
\author{Me}
\title{Beamer Tricks}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\maketitle
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}%
\frametitle<notes>{Hi}
Hello
\end{frame}
\end{document}
Redefining \framesubtitle is done in a similar way.
The default page size in a beamer presentation is 12.8cm x 9.6cm (a 4:3 aspect ratio) with a font size of 11pt. The page size is set using geometry using the following additional default settings:
\RequirePackage[%
papersize={\beamer@paperwidth,\beamer@paperheight},
hmargin=1cm,%
vmargin=0cm,%
head=0.5cm,% might be changed later
headsep=0pt,%
foot=0.5cm% might be changed later
]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
In the above, \beamer@paperwidth and \beamer@paperheight is set based on the required aspect ratio. Also as mentioned in comments above, the values of head and foot may change, depending on the requirements provided by the template/theme used. Using these default settings, you can create your own slides in the article document class using:
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[%
papersize={12.8cm,9.6cm},
hmargin=1cm,%
vmargin=0cm,%
head=0.5cm,% might be changed later
headsep=0pt,%
foot=0.5cm% might be changed later
]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
\begin{document}
\textbf{\Large Frame title}
Here is some text on a ``frame''.
\end{document}
The basic idea behind keeping a small page size is to minimize (or "lessen") the amount of content on each slide, since viewers are not supposed to read manuscripts on the each frame.
For different aspect ratios, here are the other beamer defaults, declared using the key aspectratio:
\DeclareOptionBeamer{aspectratio}[43]{%
\ifnum#1=1610% 16:10
\beamer@paperwidth 16.00cm%
\beamer@paperheight 10.00cm%
\else\ifnum#1=169% 16:9
\beamer@paperwidth 16.00cm%
\beamer@paperheight 9.00cm%
\else\ifnum#1=149% 14:9
\beamer@paperwidth 14.00cm%
\beamer@paperheight 9.00cm%
\else\ifnum#1=54% 5:4
\beamer@paperwidth 12.50cm%
\beamer@paperheight 10.00cm%
\else\ifnum#1=43% 4:3
\beamer@paperwidth 12.80cm%
\beamer@paperheight 9.60cm%
\else\ifnum#1=32% 3:2
\beamer@paperwidth 13.50cm%
\beamer@paperheight 9.00cm%
\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi%
}
Best Answer
If you want to distribute the slides, just print them to a PDF and scale the pages. Then you can distribute a version with 4 slides on a page, e.g. You can do this from within your favourite PDF viewer, or use the
pgfpagespackage. Thebeamerdocumentation section 4.6 outlines these techniques.