Sonic Foundry Takes Movies Online for 2002 Sundance Film Festival

Sonic Foundry[R] Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), a leading provider of rich media software, systems and services, today announced its Media Services division has encoded high quality streaming media versions of the films being showcased at the 2002 Sundance Online Film Festival (www.sundanceonlinefilmfestival.com) as part of the Sundance Digital Initiative. By pre-processing and capturing images using Sonic Foundry's proprietary PureStream[TM] technology, the Sundance Film Festival is ensuring that over 1.6 million visitors to the Sundance Online Film Festival website are viewing the best quality streams over the Internet.

PureStream[TM] is a capture and preprocessing solution specifically designed for film-originated content that dramatically reduces the judder, interpolation and macroblocking typically associated with encoding of 24 fps film content that's destined for the Internet. PureStream[TM] also improves the quality and playback of video-originated animation and live action — representing a significant number of the submitted entries to the 2002 Sundance Online Film Festival.

"We are honored to contribute to the Sundance Film Festival's online activities and to provide industry producers, distributors, buyers and attendees with the ability to view high quality streaming versions of films and trailers. Whether viewing them from their own computers, or from the terminals at the Festival, this audience expects the best possible images and through our PureStream[TM] technology we're able to make this happen," stated Richard Greenberg, Vice President of Business Development for Sonic Foundry Media Services. "With over a million visitors to the Festival site, it's crucial that the films look their very best in order to meet or exceed the expectations of such a knowledgeable audience."

"Sonic Foundry has proven themselves to be a leading technology partner. Their skills and expertise have helped to make the SOFF a first rate experience," stated Ian Calderon, Director of Digital Initiatives for the Sundance Institute.