Microsoft describes most of its multimedia support with the umbrella name, Windows Media Technologies. The support consists of components of the operating system, some applications, system utilities, and some underpinnings that permit and facilitate creation and playback of multimedia. The support also consists of a set of SDKs which can be used by experienced programmers to develop their own applications and work flow processes by calling upon WMT components as appropriate. Microsoft claims that this collection is now in release 9, hence WMT 9. Various of these components are necessary in running multimedia applications. Often a multimedia application will not run because the components are missing on the play back computer or the components are of back levels.
One way of looking at the function WMT provides is to divide it into three categories of components, authoring, services, and play back. For authoring, WMT includes Microsoft Movie Maker that comes when you get a computer with Windows XP. Movie Maker can be used to capture, edit, and output video in a variety of formats. Microsoft Producer can be downloaded from Microsoft's site if you have Microsoft's Power Point. It works on both the Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems. Producer comes with different templates that make it easier to author content such as narrated video or slides. Included in the authoring category are tools for encoding, and editors for editing and capturing video. The services category includes Windows Media Server and tools for Digital Rights Management. The play back category includes Windows Media Player which again you will find you have if you get a computer with Windows XP. In fact, this is the crux of the European suit that Microsoft just lost. Other companies claim that Microsoft has unfair advantage in shipping its operating system when it includes an application such as Windows media play back. Other companies such as Real Networks have to have customers download their play back application which is harder and unfair for customers Real Networks claims.
WMT 9 has a lot going for it. If you do not count the initial cost of Windows XP, WMT is free. Microsoft's Web site has many Web pages of information on WMT. Some of WMT's components win non partial comparisons with other competitors' offerings. It offers high definition and full-screen quality encoding on one end of the compression spectrum. On the other end it offers video formats suitable for mobile, small devices. There are several enhancements available for the Windows Media Player.
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