Herman Bruyninckx submitted the following macros to start up movies or other programs from within a PDF presentation made with LaTeX:

The key is to write a little shell-script and launch it from within pdflatex. In the shell-script you should simply call a standard unix tool for viewing video files, e.g.:

mpeg_play -controls off -dither color -position +128+96 video.mpg

Name this script for example videoscript.sh and make it executable. Defining the following two new commands in pdflatex,

\newcommand{\pdflaunch}[1] {\pdfpageattr{/AA << /O << /S /Launch /F (#1) >>>>}}
\newcommand{\pdflaunchlink}[2]{%
      \pdfannotlink attr{/Border [0 0 0]} user{/Subtype /Link /A << %
        /S /Launch /F (#1) >>}%
      \pdfliteral{0 1 0 0 k}%  
      {#2}\pdfliteral{0 0 0 1 k}\pdfendlink%
      }

you have either the possibility to launch this script instantly with a new slide:

\pdflaunch{videoscript.sh}

or after pressing a special link defined by:

\pdflaunchlink{videoscript.sh}{Start video}

Don't forget to kill the video application when it is not needed anymore. For this purpose again define a little script e.g.:

killall mpeg_play

and call it as mentioned above.

Uwe Brauer submitted the following hint how to call shell scripts form within PDF using a recent version of hyperref:

\href{run:matlabcall2}{\fcolorbox{black}{mygrey}{Euler-estab}}

The magic is the string run: which is followed by the name of the script.