Sonic and ICE Team to Accelerate MPEG-2
Transcoding
Sonics ICEd DVD Transcoder To Arrive on BlueIce
and Ultra BlueIce Hardware
Las Vegas, Nevada (April 10, 2000) Sonic Solutions
announced today at the National Association of Broadcasters
Convention (NAB) a technology partnership with ICE, the leader
in accelerated digital video solutions for the desktop, to
accelerate, or "ICE", Sonics industry-leading
MPEG-2 transcoding technology for DVD publishing. The Sonic-ICE
product will make fast, high-quality MPEG-2 video transcoding
a standard feature on ICEs Basic BlueICE and Ultra BlueICE
cards that power ICEs entire line of hardware/software
solutions.
"We are excited to offer Sonics high-end DVD
transcoder as an integral part of the ICE family of solutions,"
said Fady Lamaa, Director of Product Marketing at ICE. "By
applying ICEs hardware/software acceleration technology
to Sonics high-quality software encoder, we dramatically
speed the conversion of video content to MPEG-2 for DVD, enabling
thousands of ICE users to publish their video content on DVD."
ICEd MPEG-2 transcoding will integrate seamlessly
with Sonic DVD Fusion for Macintosh for Avid and Media 100
users, as well as Sonic DVDit!. The Sonic-ICE collaboration
means significantly faster MPEG-2 transcoding and a competitive
edge in meeting the surging demand for publishing video, presentations,
training materials and other multimedia content on DVD. The
ICEd MPEG-2 encoder will be provided to ICE customers
as an affordable upgrade, further leveraging their ICE investment
for publishing their work to DVD titles.
ICEs BlueICE and UltraBlueICEbased solutions
speed computationally-intensive desktop digital video applications
such as compositing, editing, special effect creation, video
compression and distribution. By placing Sonics MPEG-2
encoder On ICE, Sonic and ICE offload the computationally-intensive
steps of MPEG-2 transcoding from the host CPU to ICEs
award-winning solution. Sonic DVDit! and Sonic DVD Fusion
for Macintosh users who own Basic BlueICE or Ultra BlueICE
hardware will be able to take advantage of the new improved
transcoding speed using the ICE board without changing their
production workflow.
"As DVD publishing becomes more affordable, more video
professionals will encode high-quality MPEG-2 for DVD distribution,"
said Mark Ely, Director of Product Marketing at Sonic Solutions.
"Were eager to
work with ICE to speed the MPEG-2 transcoding process and
enable ICE customers to publish their video content on DVD."
About Ice
Founded in 1994 and based in Waltham, MA, Integrated Computing
Engines (ICE) is a leader in accelerated digital video solutions
for desktop video capture, special effects, finishing and
distribution and is used extensively by professional producers
of video, film, Web graphics, DVDs, CD-ROMs, and other moving
images. The ICE hardware/software architecture easily integrates
into standard Mac®OS and Windows® NT platforms, turning
desktops into affordable super-fast systems. ICE is privately
held and has strategic relationships with SCP Private Equity
Partners L.P., Citicorp, and Compaq Computer Corporation.
About Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ: SNIC)
Based in Marin County, California, Sonic (http://www.sonic.com)
is the leading manufacturer of solutions for DVD publishing
and interactive, streaming video on the Internet. Sonic DVDit!
(http://www.dvdit.com)
is the first application for DVD authoring targeted at consumers
and corporate video producers, and is bundled with major video
editing, capture, encoding and media production systems. Streaming
DVD is the first interactive technology based on DVD for content
distribution over the Internet. Sonic DVD Creator and DVD
Fusion for Macintosh are the most widely-used systems for
professional DVD publishing, and are installed worldwide at
major studios, post production facilities and in corporate
marketing departments. SonicStudio HD is the leading digital
workstation for preparing audio for release on CD and the
first for creating content for the new DVD-Audio format. Sonic
is also a full voting member of the DVD Forum, the standards-setting
body for the DVD format.
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