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Sony's Family of HDV Products Features Expanded Compatibility with Nonlinear Editing Solutions (5/5/2005)

With nearly 37,000 units shipped since products were introduced in October, Sony's family of HDV 1080i products is proving to be the latest in the company's successful ongoing development of new HD formats aimed squarely at meeting customer needs.

The family of HDV products for professionals, which includes the HVR-Z1U camcorder, HVR-M10U VTR and HDV-optimized DigitalMaster videotape, is not only being fully embraced by end users, but also by third party non-linear editing manufacturers and other leading technology companies.

These companies include: Adobe, Apple, Avid, Canopus, CineForm(tm), Edirol, Focus, Leitch, Lumiere HD, Miranda, NVIDIA, Pinnacle, Ulead and Vegas.

"The rapid marketplace acceptance of our HDV products for professionals has exceeded our initial expectations," said Bob Ott, vice president of professional audio and video products in Sony Electronics' Broadcast and Production Systems Division. "In addition to phenomenal image quality and exceptional ergonomics, the key to our HDV system is versatility and backwards compatibility by down-converting to the DVCAM(tm) standard definition format. Users can upgrade from SD to HD all at once, or they can do it when it makes the most sense for their operations and budgets."

In the Sony booth at NAB, ongoing demonstrations of the end-to-end HDV workflow for video professionals will highlight the real-world benefits of support for Sony HD products by third-party technologies.

Highlights of these demonstrations will feature the compatibility of Sony HDV content, in a variety of applications, with solutions from companies including:

¥ Adobe - Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 with the HDV update provides control of the HDV devices, video capture, and output of high-definition video via the IEEE-1394 connector similar to the native control already enjoyed for digital video editing. This makes high-definition video editing affordable and accessible to anyone.

¥ Apple - Demonstrating HDV editing with Final Cut Pro

¥ Avid Technology, Inc. - NewsCutter(r) XP, Avid Xpress(r) Pro HD

¥ Canopus - EDIUS Editing Solutions: Canopus's line of advanced real-time, mixed-format editing solutions for HDV includes EDIUS NX and EDIUS SP. These solutions are powered by EDIUS Pro 3 nonlinear editing software to provide native editing and real-time processing of uncompressed SD, HDV, DV, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 formats.

¥ CineForm - Aspect HD(tm) will showcase real-time non-linear editing support for film applications using a 24P workflow originating from the CineFrame 25 mode of the HVR-Z1U. In addition to this strategic NLE support, Sony's line of HDV products for professional also includes compatibility with solutions from:

¥ FOCUS Enhancements Inc. (NASDAQ SC: FCSE), Sony and FOCUS are jointly presenting groundbreaking HD and DV solutions from the field to the editing room based on Sony's HVR-Z1U HDV camcorder and Focus Enhancements' FS-4 Direct To Edit (DTE) HD disk recorder. The unique DTE technology offered through FOCUS eliminates time-consuming, real-time capturing by allowing users to simply shoot and then connect directly to a PC- or Mac-based non-linear editing systems for instantaneous editing in the timeline.

¥ Miranda -. HD-Bridge Dec HDV to HD-SDI Decoder

* HDV and HDV logo are trademarks of Sony Corporation and Victor Company of Japan, Limited.

www.sony.com/professional