For Immediate Release

    Contact: Todd Oberman  
             Lantern Corporation
             63 Ridgemoor Drive
             Clayton, MO 63105
Phone & Fax: (314) 725-6125   
 Compuserve: 73650,375  
   Internet: rhusar@mecf.wustl.edu

Lantern Corporation Announces MOVIE 4.0 Upgrade and New MOVIE Development Kit

Introduction:

CLAYTON, MO - November 11, 1993 - Lantern Corporation today increased the 
usefulness of its MOVIE Animation Utility for Windows(tm) with its release of 
MOVIE 4.0 and a new product, the MOVIE Development Kit.  MOVIE is a 
Windows 3.1 utility which creates animations by automatically capturing 
screen images and playing back the images to produce motion.  MOVIE requires 
no expensive video hardware.  The new version of MOVIE features a new device 
independent file format which can handle palettes of 256 or more colors as 
well as a royalty-free MOVIE Player which allows people to distribute their 
animations to others.  The new MOVIE Development Kit provides the capability 
to embed movies in Windows Help files as well as Multimedia Viewer files.  
Now WinHelp files can become the medium of electronic reports, newsletters 
and demonstrations. With the new Development Kit, Lantern has also opened 
up its MOVIE engine to allow developers to create their own animation 
applications with a simple frame based API.

MOVIE's small hard disk requirements, $95.00 price tag, and ease of use make 
this package particularly attractive to people with limited disk space, a 
need to create animations quickly, and those who want to include animation 
in their presentations when video clips are unsuitable.  "Let's face it.  
The Keystone Cops are just inappropriate for important presentations," 
commented Todd Oberman, MOVIE Marketing Director from Lantern.  "People need 
an inexpensive means to create their own animations which convey the 
information they need to deliver, whether that be in business, engineering, 
education or science.  MOVIE lets our customers use their own drawing and 
charting tools to create the animation they need for their specific purpose, 
and the new products provide them more ways of distributing those 
animations."

MOVIE can be combined with any drawing, painting and charting software to 
produce animated presentations.  In WinHelp files, simple animations showing 
someone how to accomplish a task are an effective tool for learning and 
training.  MOVIE can be combined with 3-D CAD and surface modeling software 
to produce fly overs and architectural walk throughs.  It can be combined 
with GIS mapping systems to animate economic, demographic or meteorological 
data through time.  Unlike some video based systems, MOVIE offers slow 
motion playback as well as smooth reverse playback without skipping frames.

Quote from Beta Tester

"We are looking for innovative ways of using Windows Help as a stand alone 
application." said John Morse of Instructions, Etc., a technical writing 
company located in Bellingham, Washington (206) 647-1228.  "We found that 
MOVIE animations placed in help files produce much more exciting and more 
informative help systems.  We have been testing how animations make a help 
file more visually attractive and might illustrate more clearly the topics 
being discussed in the help file."


MOVIE Animation Utility Features

The MOVIE Animation Utility offers Play, Record, Stop, Pause and Speed 
Control functions.  MOVIE offers additional functions such as Loop for 
continuous play, Hold to pause between loops, and an on-screen Remote 
Control that contains a subset of MOVIE's functions including frame seeking.

An Auto-Record feature snaps each frame of an animation based on user 
selected events.  Frames can be recorded before or after a window repaints 
its content, on a keystroke or mouse click in the capture window, or every 
n seconds.  When creating frames, MOVIE's capture area can be joined to a 
window enabling the user to move the window around the screen.

Using MOVIE's Script Language creates longer more detailed presentations and 
demonstrations from individual movie segments.  These scripts can display an 
individual frame of any movie file, play movie files in any order using only 
selected frames, control the playing speed of a movie, and control the length 
of time any frame is displayed.  Pauses and loops are supported for 
continuous demonstrations.  

The new royalty-free MOVIE Player allows people to distribute their 
animations to others who do not have the MOVIE Animation Utility.  The Player 
shares the same easy to use remote control interface as MOVIE, and supports 
the playback of both movie and script files.  Using the supplied Lantern 
Installation System, animation creators can automatically install their 
animations on end user computers along with the MOVIE Player.  The 
Installation System supports the creation of groups and icons in Window's 
Program Manager so that movies and scripts can be launched with a simple 
click of the mouse.

The new Device Independent file format allows movies to be created on one 
screen and played back on any other screen device supported by Windows.  
Additionally, the new file format supports color palettes of 256 or more 
color.  Color palettes can also be changed on a frame by frame basis, so 
there is no requirement that a single palette be selected for an entire 
movie file.  The previous version MOVIE 3.4 supported only a device dependent 
file format which required that movies be played back on the same screen 
device at the same resolution.


MOVIE Development Kit Features

With the release of Lantern's MOVIE Development Kit, which lists for $299.00, 
people can take their multimedia concepts a step further by placing their 
animations inside of Windows Help and Multimedia Viewer files.  Embedded 
movies can appear with their own toolbar controls or they can be plain 
windows controlled through WinHelp macro commands.  An embedded movie can be 
used as a simple slide show presentation of charts shown one at a time, or 
it may contain a series of movies with each movie played when a specific 
word or hot spot is clicked.  Movie files can be stored separately or as 
baggage inside of the help file.

Purchasers of the Development Kit receive a copy of the MOVIE Animation 
Utility as well as the MOVIE Player which can be distributed royalty-free.  
They also receive documentation of the commands and macros which embed movies 
inside of WinHelp and Multimedia Viewer files.  The embedded window DLL and 
the MOVIE DLL engine can be distributed royalty-free with help or viewer 
files created by developers.

The MOVIE Development Kit includes a thoroughly documented application 
programmer interface (API) to the MOVIE DLL engine.  With the simple frame 
based animation engine, developers can create their own animation 
applications.  The MOVIE DLL engine can be distributed royalty-free with 
any specific purpose application software developed by the programmer.



Requirements

Microsoft Windows 3.1 running on an IBM PC or compatible.  At least 
2 megabytes of RAM - 4 megabytes is recommended.  At least 1.5 megabytes of 
available hard disk space -- more to record your own animations.  Any 
graphic screen card supported by a Windows 3.1 device driver.

To create help or viewer files, Microsoft Help Compiler or Multimedia Viewer 
Publishing Toolkit and documentation.


About the Publisher

Lantern Corporation is a software development company located in St. Louis, 
Missouri.  Believing that data dissemination should be as uninhibited as 
possible, Lantern's primarily focuses on providing information delivery 
systems within the Microsoft Windows environment.  Lantern is uniting the 
analytical and presentation needs of today's users.  Lantern's other major 
product is Voyager, a data base browser for related geographic and time data.  
In Voyager, data are simultaneously displayed on map, time, variable and 
scatter views.  Voyager has applications in demographic, economic, marketing 
and environmental analysis.

MOVIE Animation Utility for Windows    $95.00
MOVIE Development Kit for Windows     $299.00
Available: December 1993

