Collaborative Production Needs of Feature Film Industry Fuel Demand for Avid Unity LANshare EX

TEWKSBURY, MA -- 12/14/2004 -- Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced that postproduction teams for the recently released feature film “Closer,” as well as five upcoming films -- “Dark Water,” “Brothers Grimm,” “Cave,” “Ice Princess,” and “Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio” -- chose the Avid Unity™ LANshare EX system for real-time collaborative postproduction. Postproduction facility Orbit Digital, which cites increasing demand for cost-effective, portable shared-storage systems in the film industry, worked with the six postproduction teams in a range of geographic locations -- from New York to Bucharest -- to create networked editing environments that connected multiple Media Composer® or Film Composer® workstations via Avid Unity LANshare EX systems. Unlike other file server-based workflows, this type of collaborative production environment from Avid enables teams of feature film editors to share footage and perform multiple editorial tasks simultaneously in real time.

“As film productions spread out across the globe and more people contribute to the creative process, portable storage and workgroup solutions are playing an increasingly important role in postproduction,” said Pete Conlin, a partner at New York- and Los Angeles-based Orbit Digital. “Avid Unity LANshare EX affords today’s feature film editorial crews an extremely stable and easy to manage real-time shared-storage solution. Collaborating on the same project, mirroring media, and playing several layers of FX on multiple sequences in real time are some of the many benefits these crews receive. We move film productions all over the world, and the fact that LANshare is so compact makes it easy to ship it out of a European or Canadian city on a Friday night and have it ready to go in Los Angeles or New York on Monday morning. No other SAN in the same price range can deliver this level of performance and portability.”

Paul Levin, Post Supervisor for “Closer,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” and “Bewitched” states, “Avid Unity LANshare and Avid Unity MediaNetwork have proven crucial to keeping the productions I have supervised on schedule. Sharing media lets our editorial teams load new footage, prep footage for dailies screenings, edit with the director, create titles or effects, and output versions of the film to tape using multiple Film Composer workstations simultaneously. All of the media assets are at the fingertips of everyone on our postproduction team, and no one has to worry about moving around bulky storage drives.”

Using the Avid Unity LANshare EX system, Orbit Digital has created networked environments with multiple Media Composer and Film Composer systems for the recently released film “Closer,” starring Julia Roberts. Orbit has also delivered similar environments for the upcoming 2005 projects “Dark Water,” “Brothers Grimm,” “Cave,” “Ice Princess,” and “Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio.” Production for all of these films began in cities outside the U.S. and then moved to either New York or Los Angeles, with Orbit easily transporting their mobile editorial solutions from location to location.

In addition, Orbit Digital has successfully implemented the same collaborative shared-stored workflow with the Avid Unity LANshare EX solution for a number of 2004 summer blockbusters. These films included “Van Helsing,” one of the summer’s top ten grossing films, and “The Village,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Wicker Park,” “Hellboy,” and “White Chicks.”

“We’re seeing steady growth in the number of feature films choosing Avid Unity LANshare EX as a hub for real-time collaboration,” added Conlin. “The system offers such good price-performance that our customers -- who create some of the world’s most popular movies -- just won’t settle for anything else.”

About Avid Unity LANshare EX

The Avid Unity LANshare EX system brings the benefits of shared storage to a wide range of small- to mid-sized media facilities, including rental shops, newsrooms, schools and universities, Web content development organizations, and corporate media departments. The product includes nearly 3 TB of storage (expandable to more than 5 TB), support for both high-bandwidth Fibre Channel and low-cost Ethernet interfaces in a compact, all-in-one server and storage chassis, and the flexibility to connect to both offline editing and online finishing systems.

About Avid Technology, Inc.

Avid Technology, Inc. is the world leader in digital nonlinear media creation, management, and distribution solutions, enabling film, video, audio, animation, games, and broadcast professionals to work more efficiently, productively, and creatively. For more information about the company’s Oscar®, Grammy®, and Emmy® award-winning products and services, please visit: www.avid.com.

© 2004 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Product features, specifications, system requirements, and availability are subject to change without notice. Avid, Avid Unity, Media Composer, Digidesign, Film Composer, and Pro Tools are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Avid received an Oscar statuette representing the 1998 Scientific and Technical Award for the concept, design, and engineering of the Avid Film Composer system for motion picture editing. Digidesign, Avid’s audio division, received an Oscar statuette representing the 2003 Scientific and Technical Award for the design, development, and implementation of its Pro Tools® digital audio workstation. Oscar is a trademark and service mark 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.

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Alice Palmer

PR

Avid Technology, Inc.

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