Novato, California (August 9, 2000) -- Sonic Solutions announced today that VET (Video Engineering and Training) has established the first Sonic-certified professional training program for the European DVD industry. Based in London, VET has developed a focused course to educate producers and engineers in the essentials of DVD title preparation including title planning, MPEG video encoding, authoring, menu concepts, DVD formatting, and output to DVD-R and Digital Linear Tape (DLT).

Over the past 15 years, VET has developed a wide variety of training programs encompassing both technical and craft skills for video industry professionals and is one of only three Avid Authorized Education Centres in the United Kingdom (UK).

In order to cater for what VET's Sales Director, Paul Williams describes as, "the next significant step since non-linear editing," VET have chosen to base their training around Sonic Solutions DVD technology because of Sonic's overwhelming acceptance in the feature film, corporate, training, educational, and now business-to-business markets. VET will be installing multiple DVD Creator and DVD Fusion for Macintosh systems to facilitate a range of DVD courses designed with a 'hands-on' approach to learning.

Before opting for the Sonic Solutions system, VET carefully examined all available DVD authoring tools. In the end, explains Williams, Sonic's strong reputation as well as the capabilities of Sonic's UK re-seller Root6 played a significant part in the decision. "We felt that Sonic provided the technology leadership our customers demand. In addition, the confidence Root6 has in the success of Sonic's products - based on considerable market experience - certainly influenced our choice. When you elect to base training around a specific product it's important to get it right the first time."

Joan Leese, VET's Training Director explains, "DVD is an exciting way to communicate a message, entertain, and connect with others. VET's training is designed for basic and advanced DVD tutorials to enable the new breed of DVD professionals to fully realize the potential of this exciting new medium. At VET, we also aim to introduce the potential of DVD technology via courses for the non-technical. Our Authoring and Advanced Authoring courses will, as always, have a strong emphasis on practical application and hands-on experience." Additionally, VET will offer specialized training modules for advanced MPEG video encoding.

Commenting on VET's appointment as a Sonic Certified Training Centre, Sonic Vice President of European Operations, Rolf Hartley added, "We're delighted to be associated with VET as one of the UK's acknowledged leaders in training programs. Having already trained over 1000 video professionals, VET has the experience and resources necessary to deliver the benefits of DVD technology to an exploding market."

About Sonic DVD Creator
Sonic DVD Creator is the world's leading DVD production system. Designed from the ground up as an integrated production tool, DVD Creator seamlessly combines DVD authoring, video and audio encoding, title proofing and final disc formatting into a single, streamlined process. As an integrated set of modular tools, DVD Creator can expand from a single workstation to a multi-system workgroup operating over fibre channel - custom-tailored to any facility's production requirements.

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.