Sonic Foundry Media Services Strikes a Deal With LAUNCH.com

Sonic Foundry Inc. (Nasdaq: SOFO), the innovative developer and marketer of comprehensive, professional-quality digital media authoring software products for the Windows[R] platform, announced a strategic alliance with popular 'Net music site LAUNCH.com during Tuesday's festivities at music-industry mainstay WebNoize 99 in Los Angeles.

Sonic Foundry's retail line of encoding products have long been the backbone of the encoding services industry, and the brand-new Sonic Foundry Media Services will now be employed to provide audio and video encoding services in support of LAUNCH.com's library of interviews with and performances by big-name artists.

"Our folks just did a comparison test of the various encoding tools on the market, and were really impressed with the superior quality of the Sonic Foundry offering. With 'Weird Al's Amish Paradise,' for example, we reviewed the 300K Real format encoded with Sound Forge and captured on Miro, which is 352x240, SingleStream, 32K audio," noted Greg Morrow, LAUNCH.com's Vice President of Business Development.

"We then took a look at the same video encoded by Sonic Foundry Media Services, which looks crisper, scales to 200 percent better, and has better colors. In short, we're really impressed with the quality you delivered. It looks great!"

For almost a decade, Sonic Foundry has invested heavily in developing an arsenal of proprietary audio and video processing algorithms. Many of these algorithms are designed to "clean up" and "optimize" audio and video prior to encoding, which is a vital step toward creating the clearest possible digital product.

The Company now plans to make its Sonic Foundry CODE[TM] directly available to content owners solely through Sonic Foundry Media Services.

"Sonic Foundry Media Services is a comprehensive, premium service offering the highest-quality encoding of audio and video in any format," noted David Mighell, Director of Business Development for the new division.

"Sonic Foundry is already a pioneer and leader in the digital media management and tools industries, and has created what are widely considered to be the world's most advanced collection of digital media processing algorithms. Sonic Foundry is, very simply, the fundamental code behind encoding technology."

About the New Division
At the heart of the new Media Services Division is Sonic Foundry's highly acclaimed development staff, which includes the foremost aggregation of digital media management developers in the world.

"We've been the Encoding Originals[TM] all along. We sell the tools that allow companies to do highest-quality digital encoding," noted Curtis Palmer, Sonic Foundry's co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. "In fact, we pioneered the tools and the encoding solutions powering the biggest names in the business, including television networks, news organizations, film studios, and record labels."

The Media Services Division is entirely platform-agnostic and can provide services to all media formats.

With more than a decade of tools development, Sonic Foundry has established solid relationships with industry hardware and software leaders like RealNetworks, Microsoft, Fraunhofer Institute, Liquid Audio, Sony, Dolby Labs, and Diamond Multimedia. Its agreements cover everything from OEM deals to joint development efforts, and as a result, only Sonic Foundry is in a position to know, in advance, the new technologies and associated challenges facing their clients.

To be contacted by a Sonic Foundry Media Services Consultant, customers should e-mail mediaservices@sonicfoundry.com, or contact Frank Carey at frankc@sonicfoundry.com.

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