March 7, 1996, 12 p.m. PT Macromedia will give its popular
Shockwave plug-in a jolt later this year when it adds real-time
audio and video streaming capabilities. Shockwave, 1 million
copies of which have been downloaded from Macromedia's Web site,
plugs into Mac and Windows versions of Netscape Navigator 2.0,
allowing Navigator users to view interactive animations, movies,
and games in Web pages. Shockwave files are created using
Macromedia's Director multimedia authoring tool,
long-established as a leading application for creating digital
animation. With an upgrade of Shockwave due out later this
year, developers will also be able to combine real-time audio,
video, and animation feeds in Shockwave movies, said Philip
Schiller, director of product marketing at Macromedia. The
current Shockwave plug-in shows only multimedia clips and
elements that are created during production, not real-time
feeds. For example, the upgraded Shockwave will allow users to
watch a real-time video newscast that runs within an interactive
television set controlled by onscreen buttons. Macromedia said
it is working with a number of partners to provide the
underlying streaming technology. The company expects to use
Progressive Networks' RealAudio streaming technology, Schiller
said, though he declined to name any other partners. In the
meantime, Macromedia will release a less ambitious upgrade to
Shockwave, version 5, at the end of this month. This upgrade
will match a key new feature, anti-aliased text, being offered
in the new version of Director that is supposed to ship by the
end of the month. The company is also working to make its audio
software, specifically its SoundEdit recording studio software,
more Internet-savvy by letting users save SoundEdit files
directly to the RealAudio format for subsequent broadcast over
the Net, Schiller said. go to next story
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