Sonic Foundry to Showcase New Vegas 4.0 HD and 24p Enhancements at NAB

Sonic Foundry[R], Inc. (Nasdaq:SOFO - News), a leading digital media software solutions company, today announced a series of new HD and 24p enhancements to its highly successful Vegas[R] non-linear editing and DVD authoring software suite. The latest update (4.0b), free to Vegas 4 and Vegas[R]+DVD registered users, provides editing and rendering of high-definition digital video, enhanced 24p capabilities, and support for Panasonic's new AG-DVX100 24p camera. Sonic Foundry will showcase the new features in its booth, #SL1569, at NAB, April 7-10, in Las Vegas and also in Microsoft's booth, #SL136. "Today's production professionals are looking for a tightly integrated platform that supports the widest possible number of source and delivery formats," explained Sonic Foundry's Brad Reinke, senior vice president and general manager of software. "Cost-effective HD and 24p capabilities are becoming essential to the production toolset and, with the addition of HD and 24p editing to Vegas 4, we're now able to support HD MPEG-2 for broadcast, 24p MPEG-2 for DVD, HD streaming media, HD animation sequences, and more." Vegas 4.0 provides integrated real-time video and audio non-linear editing with comprehensive features that allow for mixing, compositing, color correction, titling, streaming media creation and surround sound production for multimedia professionals. Vegas+DVD includes Vegas 4.0, DVD authoring (featuring DVD Architect[TM]) and a Dolby[R] Laboratories certified multichannel Dolby Digital (AC-3) encoder. Included in the list of enhancements for the most recent update are:

• Support for HD editing and rendering of high-definition video to .avi, .mov, MPEG-2, Windows Media 9 Series, RealVideo 9, .png, and .jpeg sequences, at 1080/60i, 1080/30p, 1080/24p, 720/60p, 720/30p and 720/24p, all with frame sizes of up to 2048 x 2048.
• 24p enhancements, including 24p project frame rate and timecode display; 24p editing, titles, transitions, and fx; record/edit/mix in 24p projects; 2:3 and 2:3:3:2 pulldown support; 24p DV print to tape; and 24p render to .avi, .mov, MPEG-2, Windows Media 9 Series, RealVideo 9 and still image sequences.
• Microsoft[R] Windows Media[R] 9 Series high-definition import, editing and surround encoding.
• Updates to DVD Architect to accept 24p MPEG-2 source files without recompression.
• Panasonic AG-DVX100 24p camera support includes: capture, edit, render 24p DV, auto detect of 2:3 and 2:3:3:2 pulldown, and print to tape with 2:3 and 2:3:3:2 pulldown.

The free update will be available Monday, April 7, to all existing Vegas 4.0 and Vegas+DVD users.