Preparing the Microsoft Producer

Project Publication for Web

Pete Flores, Associate Professor and Computer Specialist

Develop a quick, straight-forward process that will allow county agents or specialists to develop educational videos for program delivery via Online. The important thing to remember is to save all the files and projects to the same folder. MS Producer will create numerous files when it is published and is easier for user to move one folder to the web and linking to the web page that will display and play the producer file.

I highly recommend to capture the audio and video at the highest quality at the beginning and can always be lower when during final publishing. Fig 1. Illustrated capturing the audio at Cable or DSL connection. After project is complete is when the quality can be manipulated and published to different rates. If start with lower quality recorded product it is difficult to improve the project, whereas if start with high record quality product, it is easy to reduce the rate during publishing.      Fig 1.

In this example I am saving all the files to a directory named Webpub, this will help illustrate which files to move to web server.

As described on fact sheets from the publish setting as seen in Fig 2, select Choose publish setting for different audience. Fig 2.

As of now, be sure Media 8 codecs are selected, not all of our clientele had Window Media 9 codecs. From the publishing settings, when Next is selected a dialog box will be displayed as seen in

Fig 3

   Fig 3.

From Fig 3, notice that I have selected Windows Media 8 codecs for the Windows Media technology and Target Audience connection speed, I have selected Cable or DSL modem connection at 128 kbps and Dial-up modem connection at 48kbps. These two selections should meet the criteria for clientele with high speed connection and dial-up service. It is not necessary to select two connection speed is you are certain what speed your clientele will be viewing the published project. More than two is not recommended because it becomes confusing for the audience.

Fig 4 shows what the clientele will see when the open the web site. Notice that the default rate is the highest connection speed selected during publishing. At this point if Play is selected the MS Producer project will be played back at the highest published connection rate.

Fig 4

Fig 5

The MS Producer project I was working with and published I named webpub, so there is always a folder created that has the filename_files under the folder the ms producer project is being saved. For example if I had named my ms producer project beef, ms producer would create a sub-folder under the folder named beef files. The important folder to move to the web in this example is webpub files, using WinScp, move the sub-folder webpub_files to your web site. Once the sub-folder and all of its contents has been moved to the web site, a link has to be created to the web page for clientele to start the MS Producer project created. Viewing the contents of the webpub_files folder there is an htm filed named Default.htm. This is the file that needs to be linked to the web page. Fig 7, shows the contents of webpub_files and the many other files it creates. Just remember that the Default.htm file is the one that needs to be linked to your web site. Notice that the file name has a capital D, Default.htm, this is very important when moving the file to the web server. So when the file is link, as I did to my web site, the link is agfacts.tamu.edu/~pflores/webpub_files/Default.htm.

If the project needs to be sent out on CD, then we need to back up level to the webpub folder as seen in Fig 6 and burn that contents of that folder to the root of the CD Rom and include all the sub-folders. If you notice in Fig 6, there is a file named autorun.inf and file named scan.hta. These files are very important when sending the project out on CD. After the CD is created, the autorun.inf file will auto start the CD and run the scan.hta file, which will then open the Default.htm file. All the end user needs is Microsoft Internet Explorer to view the project.