March 10, 1997 1:45 PM ET
Macromedia announces Director 6 multimedia authoring tools
By Maria Seminerio

Macromedia Inc. today announced the Director 6 Multimedia Studio authoring tool kit, which lets developers deliver streaming animation over low-bandwidth connections. The suite includes an upgraded version of Macromedia's popular Shockwave multimedia platform, called Streaming Shockwave, which allows video files to be played over the Internet before they are completely downloaded, according to Norm Meyrowitz, chief technical officer at Macromedia, in San Francisco. "A typical Shockwave movie of 200K takes about 60 seconds to start playing. With Director 6, the user will see the same movie begin playing in about a second," Meyrowitz said. Other additions to the suite include a new interface supporting objects and offering drag-and-drop capabilities, new sound editing tools, a group of Virtual Reality Modeling Language utilities and media synchronization tools allowing tighter integration of audio and digital video, company officials said. Director 6 supports ActiveX controls, the QuickTime and QuickDraw platforms for the Macintosh, and Intel Corp.'s Pentium with MMX. It runs on Windows 95, Windows NT, the Macintosh and Power PC and is priced is $999. Upgrades for users of earlier versions of Director are available for $499. The suite will be available by the end of this month from resellers including Ingram Micro Inc. and through Macromedia at www.macromall.com/. Macromedia can be reached at www.macromedia.com/. Copyright(c) 1997 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. PC Week and the PC Week logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. PC Week Online and the PC Week Online logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Send mail to PC Week