Avid licenses Sonic DVD technology for editing products

Sonic Solutions and Avid Technology announced recently that they have entered into a multi-year licensing and co-development agreement to integrate Sonic’s industry-leading DVD technology across Avid non-linear editing product lines.
As part of the agreement, the two companies are debuting Avid DVD by Sonic, a new professional DVD creation product that is fully integrated with the new Avid Xpress Studio suite, as well as the Avid Studio Tools option for Media Composer Adrenaline.
This will give customers the ability to quickly and easily create advanced DVD titles from their finished video projects.
Avid also plans to bundle Sonic’s DVDit! 5 and ReelDVD LE software as standard components of the award-winning Avid Xpress DV, Avid Xpress Pro and Media Composer Adrenaline products.
Avid DVD by Sonic offers easy creation of sophisticated interactive DVD titles and supports the OpenDVD standard, which allows finished DVDs to be edited without requiring re-authoring.
The product also combines 4:3 and 16:9 video aspect ratios in a single project, supports the new double-layer disc burning technology, and includes up to eight tracks of 5.1-channel Dolby Digital audio and 32 subtitle tracks for easy versioning and localization.
Avid plans to include Sonic DVDit! with Avid Xpress DV 4.5 software, scheduled to ship in Q2 2004. ReelDVD LE will be included with both the Avid Xpress Pro 4.5 and Media Composer Adrenaline 1.5 products, also scheduled to be available in Q2 2004. Avid DVD by Sonic is expected to be available in Q2 2004 as a standalone product; it will also be included in the Avid Xpress Studio and Avid Studio Tools packages.
Avid, www.avid.com
(SP)