Technology Positioning Statement Report

1.2.8 Audio and Video Editing Tools

Description: Audio and video editing software tools.

Category: 1 - Authoring and Editing   Subcategory: 2 - Development Editing Tools

Vision

RetirementContainmentCurrentTacticalStrategic
   PowerPoint
 
 

Standards

Industry UsageSC Usage
SMIL
 
 

Performance Metrics

Ease of use; format interoperability; video and audio quality; integration with other desktop applications; relatively small file size.


Usage and Dependencies

Industry Usage: For both metadata and synchronization, employment of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) is just starting. The SMIL standard is just starting to see authoring/editing implementations.

However, these implementations are incompatible with each other and the full SMIL standard.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 has audio recording capability, which allows a narration and/or video to be included with the high-resolution graphics of PowerPoint (although the resulting file size is fairly large). The output can be streamed live or recorded for on-demand playing by end users. For up to 50 simultaneous users, no server is necessary; the built-in Windows Media Encoder 7 streams the audio/video directly. For a broadcast to many users, the Windows Media Server is necessary. For more details, see the tutorial by Microsoft's Brooks Cutter.

PowerPoint 2002 (in Office XP) will enable use of a free add-on product, Producer, which is a complete audio, video, and slide editing and presentation package. This product leverages Office XP, and it also destroys the earlier competing products in this space, such as Real Presenter, Macromedia Director 8 and Adobe Premier 6.0.

SC Usage: There is going to be a gradually increasing user demand for audio and video applications on desktops and hand-held devices, because it is these features that create an effective human interface. This demand cannot be supplied unless SC prepares for it with quality tools to support the creation and editing of audio and video by trained users.

Microsoft Office 2000 provides support for streaming audio and video in PowerPoint 2000, which is current on desktops. Windows 95 platforms, however, limit video support somewhat. When the platforms are upgraded to Windows 2000, then more advanced Windows Media tools (Windows Media Player 8, NetMeeting 3) will be supported.

In the near term, these tools will allow any user to create presentations that combine audio, video, and crisp PowerPoint slides into an integrated presentation that can be broadcast or unicast globally over the Internet.

SC Application Impacts: None currently foreseen; see the Industry discussion above.

Last Update: Valid Until:
4/22/200210/22/2002

References

Windows Media Services


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