Sonic DVD Fusion Streamlines DVD Publishing with Panasonic Rewritable DVD Drive; Delivers Seamless DVD Publishing for Video Editors

Business Wire, Nov 10, 1999

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 10, 1999--

Sonic Solutions(TM) (Nasdaq:SNIC) and Panasonic(R) Industrial Company announced today that Sonic DVD Fusion(TM), the first system for creating DVD projects directly from Macintosh-based Avid, Media 100 and QuickTime video editing systems, supports Panasonic's DVD-RAM drive.

With DVD Fusion and the Panasonic rewritable drive, users can publish memorable presentations, advertising comps, marketing/promotional materials, kiosk videos, interactive training, educational and multimedia productions with a quality that is far superior to tape or CDs.

With support for the Panasonic rewritable DVD drives, rich content can be published with the highest quality possible, copies can be distributed for evaluation, and content can be edited before it is placed on-line or on the air. Removable DVD-RAM media, which is readily available at a storage cost of less than a penny a Megabyte, can be overwritten more than a million times, making it even more cost-effective.

The initial users of DVD Fusion range from small video post houses to large institutions with in-house video production. "There are tens of thousands of video editing systems installed around the world," said Mark Ely, Director of Product Marketing at Sonic Solutions, "and DVD Fusion is the most productive and most cost-effective way for these users to start creating high-quality DVD titles."

"With DVD Fusion, Sonic brings all of the experience it has gained in developing the leading DVD publishing systems for video, audio and multimedia professionals to video editors using Avid, Media 100 and QuickTime-based non-linear editing systems," said Jeff Saake, Group General Manager, Panasonic Industrial Co., Computer Technology Group. "By combining DVD Fusion with our DVD-RAM drive, users have a complete solution for producing and delivering high-quality, interactive DVD content."

About DVD Fusion

Based on Sonic's award-winning DVD Creator technology, DVD Fusion gives video producers and editors a comprehensive set of tools for encoding, authoring and proofing DVD-Video titles from projects created on Avid, Media 100 and QuickTime-based video editing systems.

Sonic DVD Fusion enables digital transcoding of QuickTime video files into high-quality MPEG-2 video without the need to lay video content off to tape. This ensures the highest-quality video and avoids the signal degradation that can occur with digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion. DVD Fusion also includes Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio encoding as well as support for uncompressed PCM audio.

DVD Fusion authoring supports fast, easy, drag-and-drop assembly of video clips, audio clips and menu graphics into interactive DVD titles. Up to eight audio streams and 32 subtitle streams can be assigned to each video clip. Real-time proofing allows projects to be previewed on a CPU monitor or an external video monitor, enabling fast feedback and QC.

DVD Fusion also contains integrated DVD title verification to ensure that each DVD title is compatible across the broadest range of set-top and PC-based DVD playback devices. Finished projects can be recorded directly to DVD-RAM in a single step without the need to create intermediate files.

Sonic DVD Fusion is available in two configurations for the Macintosh. A software-based version includes MPEG-2 video transcoding and Dolby Digital audio encoding, is compatible with QuickTime video or audio files, and sells at a suggested U.S. list price of $7,999.

A hardware-accelerated version speeds MPEG transcoding by as much as 500 percent and also enables real-time VBR and CBR encoding of video content from component and composite video inputs; it has a suggested U.S. list price of $11,999.

About the Panasonic DVD-RAM Drive

A highly versatile storage solution, the Panasonic DVD-RAM drive can also be used to read from discs currently accepted by CD-ROM, CD Audio, CD-R, CD-RW and video CD drives, as well as DVD-ROM, DVD video, and DVD-R drives. Panasonic, the first to deliver DVD-RAM drives and media, was also the first to offer a DVD-ROM drive that reads DVD-RAM media.

The media interchangeability of the Panasonic drive provides added value to users who are also looking for a high-quality, low-cost, removable storage solution.

Panasonic's OEM DVD-RAM drive, model number LF-D101, is available as an internal drive with a SCSI-2 interface. OEMs can purchase the drive from Panasonic Industrial Company. Panasonic-branded internal and external DVD-RAM drives are available from Panasonic Document Imaging Company (PDIC).

The internal drive, model number LF-D103U, has an MSRP of $699. The external drive, model number LF-D102U, has an MSRP of $799. DVD-RAM media, which is marketed under the Panasonic brand name, is available from several other leading manufacturers. The removable double-sided 5.2GB disc has an MSRP of $39.95.

The 2.6GB single-sided media has an MSRP of $24.95 and is sold with a removable cartridge for playback on the latest Panasonic 5X and 6X DVD-ROM drives