Roxio Launches Easy Media Creator 8
Major Upgrade to Industry Leading Media Suite Breaks New Ground with
Pioneering Music Capabilities, Innovative Media Sharing, Advanced
Support for High Definition, and More
Santa Clara,
California (October 3, 2005)
— Roxio®,
a division of Sonic Solutions® (NASDAQ: SNIC), the leader
in digital media software, today introduced Easy Media Creator 8,
the most significant upgrade ever to its industry-leading digital
media suite. Easy Media Creator 8 seamlessly merges advanced
technologies from Roxio and Sonic into the most comprehensive suite
of CD and DVD authoring, burning, photo, video, and music
applications available.
Scheduled to be
available globally in retail and online beginning later this month,
Easy Media Creator 8’s innovative features extend the possibilities
of digital media creation, management, preservation, sharing, and
enjoyment.
“Easy Media
Creator 8, our flagship application suite, empowers consumers to
unleash the full potential of their digital media,” said Dave
Habiger, President and CEO of Sonic Solutions. “Combining
technologies we’ve pioneered for Hollywood with extensive user
feedback and research, Easy Media Creator 8 sets a new category
standard offering a unique blend of power and ease of use. With its
original, innovative features that make previously impossible tasks
a reality for the first time, Easy Media Creator 8 truly is the best
way for consumers to manage and share their digital lives.”
Digital Media Comes Home
Consumers’ new
digital media experience begins at Media Creator Home, the central
hub for navigating to any of the suite’s 25 premier applications,
launching specialized features or completing common tasks in just a
few mouse clicks using Home’s embedded functionality. From Home,
users can quickly appreciate the tremendous depth and breadth of
digital media functionality Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 delivers.
Those seeking guidance, or with little time to invest, will
appreciate the new Task Assistants that lead them quickly through
the creation of stunning personalized projects. It is here that
consumers will also discover innovative new functionality such as
instantly sharing photos over the internet with friends and family
or accessing digital media anywhere on a home network. Media
Creator Home also provides instant links to ground-breaking
capabilities of the suite that provide new, ingenious ways for
consumers to enjoy their digital media and the opportunity to
explore emerging technologies such as High Definition.
Maximizing Audio Enjoyment
Headlining the new
music capabilities of Easy Media Creator 8 is DVD Music Disc, which
turns any DVD player into a virtual music jukebox with up to 50
hours of Dolby Digital quality music. With enough room for
approximately 65 albums, DVD Music Discs play back in standard
set-top DVD players and feature attractive DVD menus and navigation
by track, artist, genre, album or year, accessed via remote control.
Another industry first in Easy Media Creator 8 is MusicID, which
acoustically fingerprints unknown music files to automatically fix
or add the correct ID3 tag information such as title, artist, and
genre. MusicID is a tremendous time saver for consumers using Easy
Media Creator 8’s feature for digitizing classic LPs and tapes.
Other new audio features enable users to burn a long audio
compilation across multiple audio CDs simultaneously,
and specify a play back order of MP3 and WMA files even if their
player only supports alphabetical playback. Another
Easy Media Creator 8
innovation makes it easy to extract audio from DVDs to create audio
CDs or MP3/WMA music tracks for use on portable players.
Easy Next Generation Video Editing and DVD Authoring
Easy Media Creator
8 uses Sonic Solutions’ advanced DVD authoring technology with the
integration of the newest version of MyDVD. The popular authoring
application, already renowned for its ease of use, now makes it
easier than ever for consumers to create personalized DVDs with
custom designs and full-motion multi-chapter menus that enable
advanced navigation. VideoWave, the suite’s rich video editing
application which includes automated video creation options as well
as advanced hands-on controls, has been architected to work in
real-time with HD video streams. Easy Media Creator 8 now includes
DivX 6 support to enable the creation, editing and playback of
high-definition DivX media files. In addition, TiVo Series 2
subscribers can now use Easy Media Creator 8 to transfer, preview,
and burn to DVD the shows they record on their home-networked TiVo
Digital Video Recorders.
Complete Disc and Data Protection
Easy Media Creator
8’s powerful recording and backup components enable consumers to
burn, copy, and archive all types of digital media and data on CD
and DVD, including double layer DVD media. Large files can now be
automatically spanned across multiple discs and burned in multiple
drives simultaneously, which is ideal for the many consumers with
both a built-in CD recorder as well as external DVD burner. DVD
movies can be easily compressed and copied from 9GB to 4.7GB discs,
with options for removing unwanted extras to optimize recording
quality. In a similar fashion to compiling a mixed music CD,
consumers can now create compilation DVDs of movies from different
sources such as DVD-Video, DivX or WMV. Easy Media Creator 8 also
allows consumers to complete the most popular data burning and disc
copying functions in fewer clicks by embedding common functions
directly within the suite’s new Home application and component
launcher.
Comprehensive Photo Creativity and Sharing
Easy Media Creator
8 makes photo creativity and sharing a snap for digital camera
owners. Ideal for new users or those with little time to invest,
Easy Media Creator 8 now includes a series of Task Assistants that
guide users quickly through the creation of stunning photo projects
such as greeting cards, panoramas, calendars, and slideshows. The
ingenious slideshow task assistant enables users to produce
slideshows with pan & zoom, title slides, background music, and
voice over narration in a matter of minutes. The resulting
slideshows can be exported to Video CD or DVD in standard or
Widescreen (16:9) format and even as DivX HD in 720p or 1080p
files. Easy Media Creator 8 makes photo sharing effortless with the
new LiveShare feature. LiveShare establishes a private peer-to-peer
connection so users
can permit friends and family, via an email web link, to directly
browse and download photos on their PC using any web browser. Using
LiveShare is as easy as sending an email without the need for large
attachments or long upload times. Another innovative
sharing option is My MediaSpace, which allows consumers to use their
home network and UPnP-compliant living room devices to access and
view media. Using My MediaSpace, consumers can share and access
photo, music, and video files between home computers as if they
reside locally and even view the content on their TV via a network
connected set-top box.
Pricing and Availability
Easy Media Creator
8 will be available beginning later this month in over 12,000 store
fronts throughout North America, directly from Roxio at (http://www.roxio.com/go/emc8)
and available shortly thereafter in Europe and Asia Pacific regions.
It will be priced at $99.99 SRP and at equivalent value in regions
around the world. Registered owners of Roxio and Sonic products, as
well as owners of select competitive products, may be eligible for
special upgrade offers. For more information on Easy Media Creator 8
or to pre-order in North America visit (http://www.roxio.com/go/emc8).
About Roxio
Roxio, a division
of Sonic Solutions, develops and markets the best-selling digital
media software in the world. Roxio offers award-winning software
products for CD/DVD burning, photo editing and video editing and has
an installed base of over 150 million users. Roxio distributes its
products globally through strategic partnerships with major hardware
manufacturers, through leading retailers, through Internet
partnerships and through direct sales at
www.roxio.com.
Roxio’s parent
company, Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ:
SNIC;
http://www.sonic.com)
is the leader in digital media software and provides a broad range
of software tools and applications for creative professionals,
business and home users, and technology partners. Sonic’s products
range from professional DVD authoring systems and interactive
content delivery technologies that are used to produce the majority
of Hollywood movies released on DVD to the award-winning Roxio-
and Sonic-branded CD and DVD creation, playback and backup
applications that have become the premiere solutions for consumers
and business users worldwide. Sonic’s AuthorScript, is the de facto
standard for CD and DVD burning and formatting and has been licensed
by major software and hardware manufacturers, including Adobe,
Broadcom, Microsoft, Scientific-Atlanta, Sony, and many others.
Sonic Solutions is headquartered in Marin County, California.
Sonic, the Sonic
logo, Sonic Solutions, Roxio, Easy Media Creator, MyDVD, VideoWave,
and AuthorScript are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sonic
Solutions or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other
countries. All other company or product names are trademarks of
their respective owners and, in some cases, are used by Sonic
Solutions under license. Specifications, pricing and delivery
schedules are subject to change without notice.