Sonic Solutions Brings Cost of DVD Production to Under $100K
Industry's First Integrated DVD Production System Now on a Single Platform
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 12, 1997-- Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ:SNIC) announced today at the International Broadcasters Convention its Sonic DVD Creator Workstation, the first all-in-one desktop system for DVD title production and the first complete solution under $100,000.
The DVD Creator Workstation runs on a single Macintosh computer; its lower price point and intuitive ease-of-use are expected to draw the next tier of DVD producers, dramatically broadening the range of DVD content available to consumers.
``DVD will change the way the world is entertained, is educated, and communicates,'' said Steve Jobs, Apple founder and board member. ``With DVD Creator on the Macintosh, the combination of Apple's and Sonic's technologies brings to the world awesome capabilities to make DVD authoring easy.''
The new Sonic DVD Creator Workstation provides all the capabilities DVD producers need -- encoding, authoring, proofing and DVD file formatting -- all on a single workstation. The system targets the creative professional with its intuitive graphical user interface and high level of integration.
``DVD was introduced to an enthusiastic response,'' said Bob Doris, president and CEO of Sonic Solutions. ``As commitment to the DVD format grows, smaller facilities and new entrants are looking for an all-in-one system that's affordable and easy to use. Sonic's new DVD Creator Workstation provides both a significantly lower initial cost and a tool designed to facilitate creative expression. It handles the complexities of the DVD specification so that the designer can create the best content.''
The Sonic DVD Creator Workstation is network-enabled and can easily be expanded into a larger workgroup as a facility's DVD production business grows. Included with the system are Sonic DVD Studio for video and audio encoding, Sonic's new DVD Producer authoring software, and DVD PrePlay for proofing titles. With the streamlined configuration, it is expected that DVDs can be produced in half the time.
``With the tight integration of its audio, video and new elegant authoring, Sonic has increased its already massive lead in the DVD tools space,'' said Bill Dever of Wilderness Films/Stimulus, a facility in Calgary, Canada, which is premastering a library of 2700 feature films for domestic and international retail markets.
``We are already running three shifts a day to keep up with our DVD production, and to date we have premastered over 650 feature length titles,'' added Dever.
``Sonic's new all-in-one DVD Creator Workstation allows us to expand our DVD Creator workgroup and gives us the added productivity we need to meet our clients' production commitments. It also allows the creative freedom to enhance our DVD titles and, of course, gives us an affordable path of expansion to continue to increase our capacity,'' said Ron Obstgarten, president of Stimulus.
The Sonic DVD Creator Workstation fully supports the DVD 1.0 specification and industry-standard video and audio formats. It is priced at $99,999 and is immediately available.
About Sonic Solutions
Based in Novato, California, Sonic Solutions designs and manufactures tools to assist video, audio and other multimedia professionals in preparing video, film, music, graphics and entertainment software. Sonic DVD Creator is the leading professional system for producing content for the DVD format, and has been used to create hundreds of DVD titles worldwide.
DVD Creator is highly integrated and includes video and audio encoding, authoring and proofing tools -- a single-vendor solution for DVD production. SonicStudio is the leading digital audio workstation used around the world by audio professionals to prepare recorded sound for release on Digital Audio Compact Disc, as well as to prepare sound for film and video soundtracks and for broadcast on radio and television.
Sonic, Sonic Solutions, the Sonic logo, DVD Creator, DVD Production Alliance, DVD Producer, and Sonic LightSpeed are trademarks of Sonic Solutions. All other company or product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
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Contact:
Sonic Solutions
Paul Lefebvre, 415/893-8000
paul_lefebvre @sonic.com
www.sonic.com
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More news for referenced ticker symbols: SNIC, and related industries: computer, entertainment, internet.
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