MS Producer 2003 shipping

Amid the hoopla of last week’s Office 2003 launch was the newest version of Microsoft Producer, which converts a standard PowerPoint presentation and narration into a browser-based rich media presentation using Windows Media. Producer 2003 comes with a number of useful features, including the ability to publish HTML files to one server while streaming the audio from another server (such as a CDN.) Before, all the files had to pretty much be on the same server. Also, a plug-in for PowerPoint captures all the slide changes and timings into a separate file. This file can be used by Producer to set up all the slide timings in the online version, no need to redo them by hand. What’s cool about that is the plug-in is the only piece needed on the presenter’s machine, not the entire Producer application. Finally, Producer 2003 takes advantage of all the cool Windows Media 9 features such as variable speed playback as well as the voice and screen capture codecs. Best of all, it’s free. All you need isPowerPoint XP or 2003 running on Windows 2000 or better.