by José Alvear
November 12, 2001
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates showed off the software during COMDEX in Las Vegas on Sunday night.
"Businesses around the world are looking for new, more effective ways to communicate both internally and externally," said Jeff Raikes, group vice president of the Business Productivity Group at Microsoft. "Microsoft Producer will do the same thing for digital media that FrontPage did for Web authoring: Make it easier and more ubiquitous in company-wide communication."
Microsoft also unveiled companies who are already using Producer to create business communication and rich media streaming content, such as Harley-Davidson, Mellon Financial Corporation, and Unisys. Another customer, RadioShack Canada, has been training employees at its 550 corporate stores and will now use Producer to cut down on production time.
Lawrence Orans, senior analyst at Gartner has predicted that by 2006, 85 percent of enterprises using all types of corporate training will realize a positive return on investment in less than one year.
Unlike Microsoft Movie Maker, which was targeted to help home users get started with streaming and video editing, Microsoft Producer is made for businesses and enterprise customers. David Caulton, lead product manager at Microsoft digital media division, said that Producer was made to make it easier to create streaming media presentations in an enterprise. “Digital media can’t really be mainstream if it takes lots of hand coding,” he said.
Producer comes with templates that let business professionals combine audio, video, graphics and PowerPoint files into one streaming presentation. It supports Windows Media audio and video formats, WAV, MPEG, MP3 and a variety of image formats. Producer can also be used to record an audio narration of a PowerPoint file, and comes with a variety of basic video editing tools. Still, it is made for on-demand content so users won’t be able to stream or create live events with Producer.
Microsoft Producer saves files as XML and shows the video window using the embedded Windows Media Player control, along with corresponding text, slides and graphics inside a browser window. But the resulting output is viewable only on Internet Explorer 5.0 and above browsers. Caulton, however, did not say if it would support playback on other browsers.
According to some early users, content created with Producer is not viewable on Mac browsers, either. Again, Caulton said there's no word on when, or if, it would support Macs, but said that he's listening to the feedback.
RealNetworks, meanwhile, has chosen a more integrated approach, playing an entire presentation in its upcoming RealONE player, with a video window, corresponding graphics and even a full-fledged browser. Caulton said that Microsoft has chosen to support output to just a browser calling it the “right place,” rather than using Real’s integrated player approach. Caulton said that many companies prefer Microsoft’s approach since it doesn’t come with its own user interface and other possibly conflicting branding problems that’s common with the RealPlayer.
Microsoft is also making available the Producer Software Development Kit (SDK), which is included with Microsoft Producer. It lets network administrators develop their own publishing services and integrate them into the Publish Wizard of Microsoft Producer.
Microsoft Producer is available for PowerPoint 2002 users, running Windows XP or Windows 2000 only. Windows ME or earlier operating systems are not supported. Caulton said that the company currently “feels comfortable” with Producer’s feature set and would not comment on future products or updates to Producer.
