What is Passport Producer?

Passport Producer, an impressive multimedia-integration package first introduced in 1992, has been replaced with Passport Producer Pro. The good news is that this upgrade includes a multitude of interactivity and pathanimation tools not in the original version. The bad news is that these improvements have jacked up the price by about $500. (The original Passport Producer is still being distributed but only through educational markets.)

Producer Pro is a time-based production tool. It allows you to synchronize graphics, sounds, movies, MIDI sequences, and other digital information into a cohesive presentation. The main interface is the Cue Sheet — a vertical time line on which each media element (or cue) included in your presentation is represented as an individual tile. You can adjust the entrance, exit, and duration of elements by dragging their corresponding tiles into place on the Cue Sheet. The time-line approach allows for very precise synchronization of cues.

The intuitive interface also includes two floating palettes. The media palette contains icons representing PICT or TIFF graphics, PICS animations, QuickTime movies, AIFF sounds, and so on. To add a new element to a presentation, you drag the appropriate icon from the palette onto the Cue Sheet and then, from the Open dialog box, select the file you want to integrate into the presentation.

The control palette contains icons representing the various cues to control interactivity or operate external devices such as CD-ROM drives, laser disc players, and tape decks. By adding these cues to the Cue Sheet you can summon a single frame or a sequence of frames from a supported device.

Once you’ve added a cue, you can apply one of more than 40 different transitions to control its entrance and exit. You can also make objects enter and exit along a path you define and assign each object a position against the Stage — the background against which the presentation will play. On a IIci with 17MB of RAM, I could combine only a few effects without seriously degrading performance. Passport suggests you allocate at least 8MB to Producer Pro (though it can run on as little as 4MB).

While the original Producer lacked the tools to build interactive presentations, the Pro version has a full arsenal. For example, you can add action cues to make a presentation loop or jump to a specific location, or button cues to shift to a new sequence or even into a new presentation.

Several other significant improvements have earned the program its pro status. A text-cue feature allows you to create text objects with drop shadows and add them to a presentation. Objects can fly in and out of a scene either in a straight line or along a custom path. (Unfortunately, you can’t move objects unless they enter or exit the scene.) New tools have been added for scaling and positioning groups of objects on Stage. And you get two CD-ROM discs with a generous supply of graphics, movies, and sounds you can use to build presentations.

Producer also includes built-in editors that allow you to cut and paste movie frames, crop graphics, create PowerPoint-like slides, and record sounds. Alternatively, you can configure the program to open your own editing programs from within Producer for last-minute touch-ups of your media files.

You can play back a finished Producer presentation on your Mac screen, export the presentation as a QuickTime movie, or if your Mac is equipped with an RGB-to-NTSC converter and connected to a VCR, print the presentation to videotape.

Overall, Producer is a superb — albeit expensive — media-integration package that makes assembling even complex presentations surprisingly easy.

Schorr, Joseph. (April 1994). Passport Producer Pro 1.0. Macworld. (pg. 81).

Download Passport Producer for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II