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Add-ins
Microsoft Producer
by Patrice-Anne Rutledge, December 1st 2003
Introduction
Lights! Camera! Action!
How It Works
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 About
Patrice-Anne Rutledge
Patrice-Anne Rutledge is the best-selling author of more
than 20 computer and business books. In addition, Patrice
has contributed to numerous international publications, developed
the columns "Global Business Today" and "eCommunicate," and
has created presentations, marketing communications materials,
and Web content for leading international organizations.
Patrice's latest book is Special Edition Using Microsoft
Office PowerPoint 2003 (Que). She can be reached at patrice@patricerutledge.com or
through her Web site:
PatriceRutledge.com
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Introduction
On-demand, rich-media presentations are more popular than ever
in today's business climate. Not only are these presentations visually
compelling, they also help companies reduce extensive travel and
training expenses. For a fraction of the cost of traditional meetings,
you can deliver training and company presentations online and on
demand, viewable by a browser from anywhere in the world.
If you're an Office user familiar with PowerPoint, you can easily
be on your way to creating exciting, media-rich presentastions
that incorporate video and audio through the Microsoft Producer
for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 add-in. Best of all, Producer
is available as a free download for all licensed PowerPoint 2002
and 2003 users.
Back
Lights! Camera! Action!
Producer is targeted to two main types of users: managers and
knowledge workers in a business environment as well as digital
media professionals. It's a useful tool for creating a variety
of streaming media including:
- Training seminars and courses
- On-demand company broadcasts and presentations
- Sales and marketing presentations
- Videotape archives
- Meeting archives
This list should give you a good idea of the potential uses of
Producer, but the easiest way to really see what a rich-media application
like Producer can do, however, is to see it in action. The Producer
2003 page on Microsoft's Web site enables you to view some Producer
demos via a broadband connection. You'll learn how to create
the Training demo yourself later in this article. Figure 1 illustrates
a sample Producer presentation, which combines video with PowerPoint
slides.
Figure 1 - By adding streaming media technology to traditional
PowerPoint slides, you can create a professional, rich-media
presentation.
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How It Works
Producer enables you to create streaming media presentations in
three steps:
- Import and capture media (such as audio, video, and slides)
and organize it in the appropriate order
- Synchronize your media elements so that the audio and/or video
plays in sync with your slides
- Publish your presentation to a network drive, Web server, or
the Internet
One of the main advantages of Producer for Office users is its
integration with PowerPoint. Producer retains animations, transitions,
and slide timings from existing PowerPoint slides that you import.
In addition, you can use PowerPoint's Pack and Go technology (2002)
or Package for CD feature (2003) to compress your Producer presentation
as well as all related audio and video files into a single, portable
file. Producer also integrates with FrontPage, enabling you to
quickly and easily publish Producer presentations to any FrontPage
Web site.
Back
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