14 DAY TRIAL // A new version of Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint was released on the Microsoft Download Center on May 3rd, 2010. Microsoft Producer is a tool designed to enable Office PowerPoint customers to publish rich media presentations on the web. In this sense, the utility allows users to create presentations containing audio, video, slides, and images that can be accessed through a browser. Producer is now tailored to the latest iteration of PowerPoint, which was released to manufacturing on April 15th, 2010, along with the rest of the Office 2010 productivity suite.
At the same time, the utility is also designed to patch a security vulnerability in the previous version of Producer. The patch was added to “MS10-016, a Windows Movie Maker bulletin we released in March 2010. At the time, we did not have an update for Microsoft Producer 2003. Today we have released a new version of Microsoft Producer that replaces the old version. We recommend that all customers using Producer 2003 upgrade to the new version,” Carlene Chmaj, from the Microsoft Security Response team, revealed.
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-016 deals with a security flaw affecting Windows Movie Maker. The patch and the vulnerability it is designed to resolve received a severity rating of Important from the Redmond company, despite the fact that remote code execution can be performed in the eventuality of a successful attack. In addition to Producer 2003, Windows Movie Maker 2.1, Windows Movie Maker 2.6, and Windows Movie Maker 6.0 were also affected by the vulnerability fixed in MS10-016.
“For those customers who do not wish to upgrade to the new version, we recommend that you apply the workaround available as a Microsoft FixIt in KB975561. The FixIt removes the file association from the application to prevent files from being opened in Producer when you double click on them. Users who apply the FixIt can still open their projects by first launching Producer and then opening the file from within the application,” Chmaj added.
Producer for PowerPoint is available for download here.