For Immediate Release Contact: Todd Oberman Lantern Corporation 63 Ridgemoor Drive Clayton, MO 63105 Phone & Fax: (314) 725-6125 Compuserve: 73650,375 Internet: rhusar@mecf.wustl.edu Lantern Corporation Announces MOVIE 4.0 Upgrade and New MOVIE Development Kit Introduction: CLAYTON, MO - November 11, 1993 - Lantern Corporation today increased the usefulness of its MOVIE Animation Utility for Windows(tm) with its release of MOVIE 4.0 and a new product, the MOVIE Development Kit. MOVIE is a Windows 3.1 utility which creates animations by automatically capturing screen images and playing back the images to produce motion. MOVIE requires no expensive video hardware. The new version of MOVIE features a new device independent file format which can handle palettes of 256 or more colors as well as a royalty-free MOVIE Player which allows people to distribute their animations to others. The new MOVIE Development Kit provides the capability to embed movies in Windows Help files as well as Multimedia Viewer files. Now WinHelp files can become the medium of electronic reports, newsletters and demonstrations. With the new Development Kit, Lantern has also opened up its MOVIE engine to allow developers to create their own animation applications with a simple frame based API. MOVIE's small hard disk requirements, $95.00 price tag, and ease of use make this package particularly attractive to people with limited disk space, a need to create animations quickly, and those who want to include animation in their presentations when video clips are unsuitable. "Let's face it. The Keystone Cops are just inappropriate for important presentations," commented Todd Oberman, MOVIE Marketing Director from Lantern. "People need an inexpensive means to create their own animations which convey the information they need to deliver, whether that be in business, engineering, education or science. MOVIE lets our customers use their own drawing and charting tools to create the animation they need for their specific purpose, and the new products provide them more ways of distributing those animations." MOVIE can be combined with any drawing, painting and charting software to produce animated presentations. In WinHelp files, simple animations showing someone how to accomplish a task are an effective tool for learning and training. MOVIE can be combined with 3-D CAD and surface modeling software to produce fly overs and architectural walk throughs. It can be combined with GIS mapping systems to animate economic, demographic or meteorological data through time. Unlike some video based systems, MOVIE offers slow motion playback as well as smooth reverse playback without skipping frames. Quote from Beta Tester "We are looking for innovative ways of using Windows Help as a stand alone application." said John Morse of Instructions, Etc., a technical writing company located in Bellingham, Washington (206) 647-1228. "We found that MOVIE animations placed in help files produce much more exciting and more informative help systems. We have been testing how animations make a help file more visually attractive and might illustrate more clearly the topics being discussed in the help file." MOVIE Animation Utility Features The MOVIE Animation Utility offers Play, Record, Stop, Pause and Speed Control functions. MOVIE offers additional functions such as Loop for continuous play, Hold to pause between loops, and an on-screen Remote Control that contains a subset of MOVIE's functions including frame seeking. An Auto-Record feature snaps each frame of an animation based on user selected events. Frames can be recorded before or after a window repaints its content, on a keystroke or mouse click in the capture window, or every n seconds. When creating frames, MOVIE's capture area can be joined to a window enabling the user to move the window around the screen. Using MOVIE's Script Language creates longer more detailed presentations and demonstrations from individual movie segments. These scripts can display an individual frame of any movie file, play movie files in any order using only selected frames, control the playing speed of a movie, and control the length of time any frame is displayed. Pauses and loops are supported for continuous demonstrations. The new royalty-free MOVIE Player allows people to distribute their animations to others who do not have the MOVIE Animation Utility. The Player shares the same easy to use remote control interface as MOVIE, and supports the playback of both movie and script files. Using the supplied Lantern Installation System, animation creators can automatically install their animations on end user computers along with the MOVIE Player. The Installation System supports the creation of groups and icons in Window's Program Manager so that movies and scripts can be launched with a simple click of the mouse. The new Device Independent file format allows movies to be created on one screen and played back on any other screen device supported by Windows. Additionally, the new file format supports color palettes of 256 or more color. Color palettes can also be changed on a frame by frame basis, so there is no requirement that a single palette be selected for an entire movie file. The previous version MOVIE 3.4 supported only a device dependent file format which required that movies be played back on the same screen device at the same resolution. MOVIE Development Kit Features With the release of Lantern's MOVIE Development Kit, which lists for $299.00, people can take their multimedia concepts a step further by placing their animations inside of Windows Help and Multimedia Viewer files. Embedded movies can appear with their own toolbar controls or they can be plain windows controlled through WinHelp macro commands. An embedded movie can be used as a simple slide show presentation of charts shown one at a time, or it may contain a series of movies with each movie played when a specific word or hot spot is clicked. Movie files can be stored separately or as baggage inside of the help file. Purchasers of the Development Kit receive a copy of the MOVIE Animation Utility as well as the MOVIE Player which can be distributed royalty-free. They also receive documentation of the commands and macros which embed movies inside of WinHelp and Multimedia Viewer files. The embedded window DLL and the MOVIE DLL engine can be distributed royalty-free with help or viewer files created by developers. The MOVIE Development Kit includes a thoroughly documented application programmer interface (API) to the MOVIE DLL engine. With the simple frame based animation engine, developers can create their own animation applications. The MOVIE DLL engine can be distributed royalty-free with any specific purpose application software developed by the programmer. Requirements Microsoft Windows 3.1 running on an IBM PC or compatible. At least 2 megabytes of RAM - 4 megabytes is recommended. At least 1.5 megabytes of available hard disk space -- more to record your own animations. Any graphic screen card supported by a Windows 3.1 device driver. To create help or viewer files, Microsoft Help Compiler or Multimedia Viewer Publishing Toolkit and documentation. About the Publisher Lantern Corporation is a software development company located in St. Louis, Missouri. Believing that data dissemination should be as uninhibited as possible, Lantern's primarily focuses on providing information delivery systems within the Microsoft Windows environment. Lantern is uniting the analytical and presentation needs of today's users. Lantern's other major product is Voyager, a data base browser for related geographic and time data. In Voyager, data are simultaneously displayed on map, time, variable and scatter views. Voyager has applications in demographic, economic, marketing and environmental analysis. MOVIE Animation Utility for Windows $95.00 MOVIE Development Kit for Windows $299.00 Available: December 1993