Animation using a sequence of images in a single pdf file

You can use the animate package to do this:

Code

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{animate}

\begin{document}

\begin{center}
  \animategraphics[autoplay,loop]{1}{animation}{}{}
\end{center}

\end{document}

The syntax is the following:

\animategraphics[<options>]{<frames per second>}{<name without extension>}{<first frame>}{<last frame>}

If you don't specify <first frame> or <last frame>, the first respectively last page are used. In the given example the <options> make the animation looping continuosely. Other things, as control buttons (start, stop etc.) are possible, please refer to the manual for more options.

Alternatively, the media9 package can be used, movie15 is outdated, and playback, of GIF files in particular, is very unreliable as it depends on third-party plug-ins used by AdobeReader.

For use with media9, the PDF needs to be converted to SWF, using pdf2swf. This conversion keeps the vector-graphical nature of the original file:

pdf2swf  --set framerate=1 --output animation.swf animation.pdf

The frame rate is adjusted to 1 FPS, as requested.

Inclusion is done as:

\usepackage{media9}
\usepackage{graphicx}
...

\includemedia{\includegraphics[page=1]{animation}}{animation.swf}

The first page of the original animation.pdf is used as the poster image.

1. Animated .gif:

You can produce an animated .gif file via:

pdfcrop animation.pdf

and then use convert from ImageMagick to obtain a .gif file. So something like:

 convert -verbose -delay 100 -loop 0 -density 400 animation-crop.pdf animation.gif

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2. Include .gif:

As per How to add a gif file to my LaTeX file? the .gif file can be included by including the movie15 package in the preamble:

\includemovie{1cm}{1cm}{animation.gif}