Sonic DVD Producer™ Merges DVD with Multimedia

New DVD Authoring Application Delivers Seamless DVD Publishing for Multimedia DVD Professionals

Las Vegas, Nevada (April 8, 2002) - Sonic Solutions [NASDAQ: SNIC] today introduced, at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB), Sonic DVD Producer, its latest innovation for professional DVD authoring. Providing all-in-one publishing for producers of professional multimedia DVDs, DVD Producer streamlines the process of creating DVDs by combining real-time MPEG-2 compression of DV video, high-performance transcoding of media files, powerful, yet simple to use DVD authoring, automatic navigation tools, and output to the widest range of DVD writing devices.

DVD Producer is the latest Sonic authoring application to to create OpenDVD™-compliant discs. With OpenDVD, finished DVD discs can be opened for editing, video and audio content can be added or deleted, menus and navigation can be changed or expanded, and the finished project written to DVD-Recordable. DVDs created with other OpenDVD-compliant authoring applications are completely compatible with DVD Producer.

"Sonic DVD Producer gives us a very powerful way to publish DVDs in-house," said Ed Heubel, Vice President and Sr. Engineer at Bank of America's Knowledge Channel. "With DVD Producer, we are able to deliver our corporate messages to consumers effectively and interactively. Its encoder delivers exceptional quality MPEG-2 from our video sources, and DVD Producer's simple point-and-click interface is straightforward, yet incredibly powerful. And Sonic's high-performance implementation of the new OpenDVD standard means we can use our finished discs as an archive, for inevitable future updates."

Sonic DVD Producer gives video editors and multimedia producers a comprehensive set of tools for encoding, authoring, proofing, and outputting to a wide range of DVD writer and DLT devices. Built upon Sonic's industry-leading DVD multiplexing and formatting technology that has become a Hollywood standard, DVD titles created with DVD Producer are compatible across the broadest range of set-top and PC-based DVD playback devices.

DVD Producer creates high-quality MPEG-2 video in real-time from tape transfers, or through digital transcoding of video files, without the need to lay video content off to tape, delivering high-quality digital video and avoiding the signal degradation that can occur with digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion. Sonic MyDVD™, which is included, provides real-time MPEG-2 compression via DV input to Firewire, and automatic DVD recording.

DVD Producer supports extremely fast and easy, drag-and-drop assembly of video clips, audio and menu graphics into interactive DVD titles. Using Sonic's automatic JumpAnywhere™ navigation technology, users can mix video 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, and up to 8 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 with Sonic's SD-1000 video hardware, enabling fast feedback and quality review.

Finished projects can be recorded directly to DVD-recordable in a single step without the need to create intermediate files. And because DVD Producer is OpenDVD-compliant, DVDs created with the software can be opened and edited to add or delete content later on.

"Sonic DVD Producer opens the world of DVD publishing to the tens of thousands of in-house corporate video and professional multimedia producers looking to make a move to the next-generation of interactive content delivery," said Matt Palmer, Senior Product Manager for Sonic's Professional Products Group. "Sonic DVD Producer is the most productive and most cost-effective way to make compelling titles for communicating with customers and colleagues."

Sonic DVD Producer is available in two configurations. A software-based version includes MPEG-2 video transcoding and Dolby Digital audio encoding and is available at a suggested U.S. list price of $4,000. It includes a free copy of Sonic MyDVD™ software, with real-time MPEG-2 encoding.

A DVD Producer workstation version features Sonic's advanced SD-1000 MPEG Real-time Hardware Encoder for superior-quality VBR and CBR video compression via SDI and simultaneous Dolby Digital Audio encoding in real-time. The SD-1000 also provides proofing to external video monitors; it has a suggested U.S. list price of $13,000 U.S.

About OpenDVD
OpenDVD is a revolutionary technology that makes DVD discs dynamic and changeable. Until now, DVD-video has been a static medium; once the DVD content on a disc was finalized, making even minor modifications was a major task that required the reconstruction of the entire disc from the original source files. The OpenDVD format changes all that by incorporating a special file in the DVD-ROM "zone" of a DVD disc that contains all the information needed to open a disc as a project file in any OpenDVD-compliant application, to work with all of the disc's existing contents, and to update the project with new content, menus, and more extensive interactivity. OpenDVD-compliant discs may be revised without reference to any original source materials making every DVD a living archive of the original video project, substantially saving hard drive space, archiving media costs, and hours of time. OpenDVD technology maintains the full feature-set of the DVD-Video format, and complete compatibility with recordable/rewritable DVD and CD media. OpenDVDs are viewable in all standard DVD playback settings, from set-top players to computer-hosted DVD drives.

About Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ: SNIC)
Based in Marin County, California, Sonic (http://www.sonic.com) is the world's leading manufacturer of solutions for DVD creation. Sonic DVD Creator®, Sonic Scenarist®, Sonic ReelDVD™, Sonic DVD Producer™ and Sonic DVD Fusion for Mac 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. Sonic MyDVD™ (http://www.mydvd.com) is the first DVD authoring application for consumers, and is the leading DVD solution among DVD recorder and PC manufacturers. Sonic DVDit!® (http://www.dvdit.com) is the leading DVD authoring application for videographers and corporate video producers; more than 1 million copies of DVDit! have been sold. Sonic is a full voting member of the DVD Forum, the standards-setting body for the DVD format.

Sonic Solutions, the Sonic logo, DVD Editing, MyDVD, and ReelDVD are trademarks of Sonic Solutions. AuthorScript, Sonic DVD Creator, DVDit!, and Scenarist are registered trademarks of Sonic Solutions. All other company or product names are trademarks of their respective owners and, in some cases, are used by Sonic under license. Specifications, pricing and delivery schedules are subject to change without notice.