Avid Delivers Ultimate HD Editing Experience With Release of Next-Generation Editing Systems

Market Wire, April, 2008

Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) today unveiled a new family of professional digital video editing systems that offer greater speed, responsiveness, reliability and price-performance -- delivering an exceptional HD editing experience to media professionals. The new lineup, which includes next-generation versions of Avid Media Composer (v3.0), NewsCutter (v7.0), and Symphony(TM) (v3.0) software, as well as new hardware configurations, Mojo DX and Nitris DX, maximizes real-time performance for customers by intelligently using all available computing bandwidth to evenly disperse the processing of video and effects across the entire system. The result is an extremely fast and responsive HD editing experience that provides greater creative freedom and flexibility to end-users.

The increase in power and performance of Avid's new editing systems is the result of an architectural design that tightly integrates Avid software and hardware with the CPU, host graphics card and PCI Express connection, to create a high-bandwidth, high-performance effects engine. This design eliminates the lag time in responsiveness that users often experience when working with HD material during the editorial process.

"For any project we begin, we need to know that our tools are going to help us work as fast as we can think and get the job done under budget, usually with intense deadlines," said Dave Ballard of LAB 601 , Inc., a beta tester of the new Media Composer Nitris DX. "Lots of products boast the latest bells and whistles, but if the tools don't allow us to perform flawlessly in high-pressure situations, none of the bells and whistles matter. The creative process can grind to a halt the moment that technology prevents us from trying something new -- on the fly. Speed and performance rank at the top of any wish list for editors. I need a system that responds to the way I want to work and allows me to work more freely. The Media Composer Nitris DX is faster than any other Media Composer I have worked on in the past, and has been rock-solid reliable and flexible in all of our daily workflows."

Avid's Next-Generation Editing Systems

Avid's new editing lineup offers a range of new capabilities designed to enhance the HD editing process, including:

-- Real-time output of all major SD and HD formats, which eliminates the
   need for rendering with the Avid DNxHD® codec; customers will
   experience greater responsiveness during the output process.

-- A real-time effects architecture that closely ties multi-core CPU, GPU
   and PCI Express hardware into a single high-performance pipeline that
   increases the speed of the HD editing experience.

-- Improved codec and file-based format support including:

    --  Native support for "Thin Raster" formats including DVCPRO HD and
        XDCAM HD; with real-time output with multiple streams of HD;
    --  Native editing support for AVC-I, which will be supported in
        50 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s formats, via the same Avid workflow as
        P2/DVCPRO HD;
    --  Sony XDCAM-EX (requires Sony Clip Browser software -- currently
        available only on Windows); and
    --  JVC 23.976p and 25p HDV codecs.

-- Support for Mac Leopard OS and Windows Vista 32 and 64 bit operating
   systems.

-- A SubCap(TM) visible captioning tool for adding subtitles, with the
   import and export of EBU-N19 formats.

-- MetaFuze(TM), a new tool designed for quickly merging single-frame files
  (such as DPX and TIF) from film scanning or CGI systems into a single
   media clip on the Windows platform. MetaFuze enables users to create
   Avid DNxHD 36 files from DPX or TIF masters and use the files during the
   offline edit in a DI workflow -- with final conform taking place on a DS
   system.

-- A real-time multi-window timecode burn-in tool, which enables customers
   to simplify the screening process by burning multiple timecodes and
   sequence information onto a video and superimposing the timecode over
   the picture during output and playback.

-- Blu-ray output with new Avid DVD by Sonic™ which makes it easier for PC
   users to create high definition DVDs.

-- XML export for sequences via Avid FilmScribe which enables all source
   and record side metadata to be exported as XML, including change notes.
   With this feature, transforms can be applied to create EDLs (e.g., scan
   lists, ASC color metadata, etc).

"This news represents another milestone in how Avid continues to drive 'New Thinking.' Our customers have told us that quality, performance and value are the most important characteristics in any product or solution. We're glad to say that this new suite of offerings reflects these priorities," said Kirk Arnold, executive vice president and general manager of Avid Video.

System Configurations, Availability and Pricing

The new HD systems are expected to be available in Q2 2008 and will offer exceptional price-performance, with flexible hardware configurations designed to meet a range of professional production needs. In addition, both the new Media Composer and Symphony configurations are qualified to run on Mac OS X Leopard and Windows XP and Vista platforms, and NewsCutter configurations are qualified for Windows XP and Vista. All Media Composer and NewsCutter systems offer the same software toolset across their respective configurations -- with additional capabilities coming from different hardware options. These configurations include: