Using Windows Media Presenter

This section explains one way to use Windows Media Presenter for Microsoft PowerPoint 97. Using Microsoft Windows Media Player, users watch the streaming video of a presenter talking and see images of the PowerPoint slides on a Web page.

The ASF stream and the PowerPoint presentation referred to are not provided with the Windows Media documentation; however, the Web pages from which users download the presentation material and view the ASF stream and the slide presentation have been provided in the SystemDrive\Program Files\Windows Media Components\Tools\Presenter folder. To make these Web pages work, you must replace the paths and IP addresses in the scripting with the locations of your images and servers. If you want to use these sample pages and need instructions on modifying them, see Presenter sample pages.

The procedures in this section show you how to set up and use Windows Media Presenter to send PowerPoint slides as part of an ASF stream. These procedures use the following programs: Windows Media Encoder, a Windows Media server (for unicasting and multicasting), PowerPoint, Internet Information Services (IIS), and Windows Media Player. Using a separate computer for each program is recommended, although it is not always necessary. Encoding video and audio content into an ASF stream can require a great deal of processing power; forcing a computer to encode audio and video while it does other tasks can cause Windows Media Encoder to fail.

Using Windows Media Presenter requires a collaboration between many different computers on your network to be successful.

The following steps must be accomplished before giving the presentation:

The PowerPoint computer must be properly prepared to output the presentation.
Windows Media Encoder must be configured to accept the input from both the PowerPoint computer and the live audio and video content.
The Windows Media server must have a station set up to transmit the presentation.
The IIS server must be configured properly to accept the commands from both the Windows Media server and the users.
The users must be prepared to accept the presentation.

Before the presentation begins, the start time and the URLs used for the presentation must be provided to prospective users. When a user opens the initial Web page, images of the PowerPoint slides begin transferring to the user's browser cache. This eliminates the time it takes the browser to download the images from the IIS server during the presentation.

When the PowerPoint presentation starts, Windows Media Presenter connects to Windows Media Encoder, which begins streaming the video and audio. When the presenter switches slides, Windows Media Presenter sends a URL script command to Windows Media Encoder, which then includes the command as part of the ASF stream. When Windows Media Player receives the URL script command, it sends the URL to the browser, which checks its cache to display the image that pertains to the URL in the browser frame. If the image is not in the cache, the browser downloads the image from the IIS server. The user sees the PowerPoint slides in his or her browser window and the video of the presenter in the Windows Media Player window. The audio and video content is synchronized with the switching of slides.

Note

If you are connecting through dial-up networking to a Windows Media Encoder that uses either the Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows 98 operating system, please see Enabling remote connections to Windows Media Encoder for more information.