RealNetworks Announces RealProducer 7.0 at Streamingmedia Conference
By Stephen Muratore
December 9, Streamingmedia Conference, San Jose Convention Center
RealNetworks, a leader in streaming audio and video development, announced version 7.0 in their line of authoring and playing products for RealMedia streaming files. Videographers will be most interested in RealProducer (free), Real Producer Plus ($149) and RealProducer Plus Pro ($499). All are in version 7.0 for Windows, Mac or Linux. This line of authoring and encoding programs convert avi, wav, mov, MPEG1, MP3, and au files to RealMedia streaming files. In addtion the Plus version supports double-pass encoding to shrink files, variable bitrate encoding to insure quality, and telecine features. In addition to these, the Pro version supports batch encoding and simple SMIL editing tools.
In an aside, one RealNetworks representative at the conference said, “Frankly the software won’t run as fast on the Apple G3s and G4s as it will on equivalent Pentium machines. The Motorola chip used in the Apples are not optimized to support streaming media the way the Intel chips are.”
