[OS X TeX] Images and movies in LaTeX.

[Maarten Sneep]

On 30 sep 2004, at 0:09, Andrea Riciputi wrote:

> I'm trying to build up a presatation using the prosper class. Most of 
> the presentetion will consist in images and movies. After playing a 
> little bit with prosper hyperref and so on, I've ended up with a some 
> questions.

Will you use pdflatex or latex+dvips as a basis? I seem to recall that 
prosper didn't really like pdflatex, but I may be mistaken.

> 1) How can I include tiff or jpeg files directly using graphicx. 
> Searching the Net for a solution I've found something like this:
>
> \DeclareGraphicsRule{.tif}{eps}{.tif.bb}{`tiff2ps -e #1}
>
> where .tif.bb files are files that contain the bounding box 
> coordinates. But it doesn't work. :-( Any other suggestions?

This one would only work with latex+dvips, depending on whether the 
tool tiff2ps is installed. For me it is, but it probably got installed 
with ghostscript or imagemagick. From the options-list, you'll probably 
want the last bit to read {`tiff2ps -2 -e #1} (create level 2 ps, much 
more compact.

If prosper works with pdflatex, you should consider to convert the tiff 
files to png or jpeg (in the highest quality setting).

> 2) How can I get movies playback inline, I mean without having 
> QuickTime Player that opens as a separate application?

pdflatex can do this, but be sure to test on the machine you are going 
to use for the presentation: for me it didn't work under Windows. 
You'll have to use Adobe Reader to get it to work.

Pointers to packages that will help you:
ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/movie15.tar.gz
http://robotics.caltech.edu/~radford/easymovie.sty

The latter claims to work with latex, but ultimate support depends on 
the dvi -> pdf steps.

> 3) If I can't get an inline playback, how can I get an image as a link 
> to start a movie?

easymovie supports this, but you may need to produce your poster-frame 
as a separate picture.

> 4) Last question: Apple Preview seems doesn't show movies nor starts 
> up Quicktime. Is there a way to fix this? I'd highly prefer to use it 
> instead of Acrobat Read because I've noticed that it renders images 
> much better.

No, not that I'm aware of. You may want to play with the settings of 
anti-aliasing and smoothing, you may also want to increase the 
thickness of the lines in your figures (and tone down the colour). If 
you can: use acrobat 5, the display quality is better (at least for 
presentations.

Maarten

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