Sonic Announces Support for Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition for Windows XP

Sonic MyDVD® Enables Support for New Plus! Photo Story Digital Photo Albums

Las Vegas, Nevada (January 9, 2003) — Sonic Solutions [NASDAQ: SNIC] announced today at the International CES Convention that Sonic MyDVD, the world’s leading DVD creation software, fully supports the new Plus! Photo Story feature in Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition for Windows XP, the photo, music and movie enhancement pack for Windows XP. This new support enables users to create great-looking DVDs with their digital photo albums.

A breakthrough feature for digital photography enthusiasts, Plus! Photo Story creates a whole new way to enjoy and share digital photos, allowing users to build unique video stories with narration and music, and even automatically add motion to the photos via pan and zoom effects that make the photos come to life. In just a few steps, users can convey the stories behind their digital photos and create innovative digital photo albums, including their own narration and music, to share with friends and family. With the ability to import anywhere from one to 150 pictures per photo story, users can create visually stunning stories that cover a single moment in time, an entire vacation or even a whole year in highlights. Based on new Windows Media Video 9 Image compression technology, high-quality photo stories also are small enough to easily e-mail or post to the Web.

Using Sonic MyDVD, users of Plus! Digital Media Edition for Windows XP can import their Plus! Photo Story albums directly into MyDVD, creating DVDs and Video CDs that can be played on DVD players and shared with friends and family.

“Sonic is a leading provider of technology for home DVD creation, and we are extremely pleased that they have incorporated support for the Photo Story feature of Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition,” said Jonathan Usher, Director of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft Corp. “Now, anyone creating digital photo albums with narration and music can quickly and easily create great-looking DVDs from their projects to watch later or send to friends and relatives.”

Sonic MyDVD, the leading PC application for consumer DVD creation, makes it easy to burn high-quality DVDs with motion-video menus, animated buttons and slideshows with transitions and soundtracks. MyDVD also features optimized Direct-to-DVD™ recording which allows users, in just a few clicks, to record their content directly to DVD from a video source connected to the computer’s video input. MyDVD is also OpenDVD^®-compliant, enabling previously burned DVDs to be opened, re-edited, updated with new video and photo content and re-burned to DVD and CD recordable/re-writable media.

"With their new Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition, Microsoft has created an exciting offering that provides a wide range of new experiences for anyone who enjoys digital photography, digital music and video,” said Mark Ely, General Manager of Sonic's Desktop Group. "Our collaboration with Microsoft will provide MyDVD users with a smooth workflow to take projects they have created using Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition, and further enhance them to create Hollywood-style DVDs they can archive and share with others.”

About Sonic MyDVD
Sonic MyDVD is the first-ever DVD recording and editing application for home users. With its ability to record analog and digital video (DV) in real-time into MPEG-2 for DVD, MyDVD is the fastest and easiest way to share treasured video memories with friends and family on DVD discs from wedding videos to children's birthday parties and other special events. MyDVD allows users to capture video to a DVD or CD, just like recording onto a VCR. It also includes built-in software transcoding that automatically converts all video formats into those compatible with DVD players, freeing the user from the headaches of determining DVD file compatibility. Sonic MyDVD is the only application that not only records Direct-to-DVD®, but also creates DVDs that can be re-edited. Using Sonic’s advanced Edit-on-DVD™ capability to create and edit discs that are compatible with OpenDVD^® technology allows discs to be changed after they are initially created. This enables an entirely new generation of DVD applications, such as video diaries, up-to-the-minute, customized sales presentations, compilations of family events, and more.

About Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ: SNIC)
Based in Marin County, California, Sonic (http://www.sonic.com) is the world’s leading supplier of DVD creation software. Sonic’s professional DVD authoring software is used to produce the majority of major film releases on DVD. Sonic’s desktop DVD creation software powers most of the world’s DVD burners, and Sonic’s CD and DVD mastering software is the top rated OEM solution for transferring and backing up data to CD and DVD media. Sonic's core strengths include in-depth knowledge of the DVD and CD digital media formats and the video and audio data types they require, and the design of friendly, yet powerful, authoring and editing applications for the consumer, desktop and professional CD and DVD markets.

Sonic, the Sonic logo, CinePlayer, Edit-on-DVD, OpenDVD, and PrimeTime are trademarks of Sonic Solutions. AuthorScript, Sonic DVD Creator, MyDVD, DVDit!, ReelDVD 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.