Avid Delivers Media Composer and Avid Xpress Pro for Intel-Based Macs

Company also unveils revolutionary phonetic speech recognition capability and the industry’s most efficient HD codec for offline editing

Tewksbury, Mass. – March 30, 2007 – Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced the worldwide availability of version 2.7 of its award-winning Media Composer ® family of products and version 5.7 of Avid Xpress ® Pro software. The new Media Composer and Avid Xpress Pro systems now include support for Intel-based Mac notebooks and workstations, new workflow capabilities, and an updated bundle of third-party content creation software.  Both Avid products also offer expanded format support, including write-back capabilities for the popular Sony XDCAM and Panasonic P2 file-based media formats, as well as support for the emerging 720p50 HD broadcast standard in Europe.  In addition, version 2.7 of the Media Composer system introduces two industry breakthroughs – Avid ScriptSyncâ„ ¢, a next-generation script-based editing tool that uses phonetic speech recognition technology to automatically sync text with media; and Avid DNxHD ® 36, the industry’s most efficient HD codec for offline editorial, which runs at a data rate of 36 Mb/s (megabits per second), only slightly greater than the data rate of DV25 media, but at full-raster HD resolution. Avid will showcase the new Media Composer and Avid Xpress Pro systems – alongside other technology innovations – at the National Association of Broadcasters convention next month in Las Vegas from April 16 - 19, 2007. read more...