Weta Digital Offers Clients HD VFX Workflow With Avid DNxHD 36

Academy Award®-winning company adds HD capability for more accurate effects creation

Tewksbury, Mass., February 2008 – Avid Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AVID) today announced that Weta Digital, an Academy Award-winning visual effects facility based in New Zealand, has expanded to offer clients HD VFX workflows using Avid DNxHD®36 media – resulting in faster and more accurate VFX review processes for productions working in HD. Because the Avid DNxHD 36 delivers HD image quality at data rates only 50% larger than standard definition DV25, visual effects artists at Weta Digital can now exchange high-resolution media with production teams in real time over an Ethernet network and work with a better visual reference for VFX creation. In addition, the massive storage efficiency of Avid DNxHD 36 – which requires only 2% the storage of uncompressed HD – enables Weta to easily store multiple HD projects at once.

“Avid DNxHD 36 is the codec of choice for productions that have decided to offline in HD because of the time and money it helps save when preparing screenings and storing HD media,” said Matt Holmes, supervising visual effects (VFX) editor, Weta Digital. “A majority of our VFX clients work on Avid [systems] – so it is critical for us to exchange projects, bins, media, and user settings to work seamlessly with those creative teams. For a VFX house, the ability to do this with Avid DNxHD 36 material means we have a much better reference for visual effects creation – which translates to more efficient coordination with the production.”

Weta Digital’s Avid workflow is built around six Media Composer® systems, upgraded to version 2.7 to support Avid DNxHD 36, which are networked to an Avid Unity™ shared storage system with 24TB of storage, which Weta also recently upgraded from a 6 TB Avid Unity system.

Bill Admans, director of marketing for the facilities segment of Avid’s Video division, commented, “Weta Digital is recognized worldwide for their incredible VFX work on films such as Lord of the Rings and X-Men: The Last Stand. They are also a perfect example of how the Avid workflow extends beyond the cutting room and includes other creative teams that are part of the post process. By enabling everyone to work in HD early and exchange media seamlessly, Avid DNxHD 36 provides a powerful link between the post facilities, production teams and VFX houses to work more efficiently and deliver the best work on schedule.”

For more insight into Weta’s latest projects and the company’s outlook on visual effects work,
listen to Avid’s podcast with Weta’s Matt Holmes, at: www.avid.com/podcasts.
© 2008 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Product features, specifications, system requirements, and availability are subject to change without notice. Avid, Digidesign, Film Composer, M-Audio, Pinnacle Systems, Sibelius, Softimage, Sundance Digital, Avid DNxHD, Avid Unity and Media Composer are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. Academy Award and Oscar are trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Emmy is a registered trademark of ATAS/NATAS. Grammy is a trademark of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, Inc. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.