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Avid Collaborates With Microsoft to Deliver Native VC-1 Support in Industry-Leading Professional Editing Tools (20/9/2005)

Planned implementation builds on Avid's investment in Windows technologies.

Today at IBC2005, the International Broadcasters Convention, Avid Technology, Inc. and Microsoft Corp announced a collaborative development initiative that enables Avid to build on its existing investment in Windows(r) technologies by delivering cutting-edge, professional video and audio postproduction solutions that support VC-1, the proposed SMPTE standard based on Microsoft(r) Windows Media(r) Video 9. Avid plans to provide native support for VC-1 in upcoming versions of its digital nonlinear video-editing products, as well as its Digidesign and M-Audio digital audio production solutions.

"Microsoft is extremely pleased to work with Avid to deliver native VC-1 support within Avid's professional video and audio, broadcast, and postproduction solutions," said Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft. "Building upon Avid's investment in Windows Media technologies, these new VC-1 capabilities will enable seamless creation through existing postproduction processes and help significantly reduce production and editing time."

"Our agreement with Microsoft to support VC-1 will enable improved workflows for our customers by making it easy to publish and share media for review and approval, and encode media for web distribution and DVD authoring," said Mike Rockwell, chief technology officer at Avid. "Native editing of VC-1 will also enable quick broadcast of material sent in from the field via network transfer. It's the first workflow of its kind that offers dramatic time and cost savings. We are pleased to work with Microsoft to break new ground in digital media production and distribution."

VC-1 has reached the critical step of Final Committee Draft (FCD) status with SMPTE's C24 Technology Committee, in which it is officially referenced as SMPTE standard 421M. VC-1 is under consideration by a number of other standards and industry organisations, and completion of the work with SMPTE will allow interested parties to make a simple reference to the SMPTE standard to standardise it within their group.

www.avid.com

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