Sunday, July 2, 2000
Sorenson Media Announces the Availability of Sorenson Video 3 Exclusively for QuickTime
Sorenson Media, Inc., the leader in video compression and high-quality Web streaming services, announced today the availability of Sorenson Video 3 exclusively for QuickTime. Sorenson Video is the industry pacesetter for high-quality video compression at low-bandwidth delivery.
"Our tests indicate that Sorenson Video 3 gives users better high-motion video quality than Sorenson Video 2 at less than half of the bit rate. Sorenson Video 3 delivers twice the compression speed as Sorenson Video 2 and three times the speed when using Variable Bit Rate (VBR) compression," said Jim Sorenson Jr., CEO of Sorenson Media.
Sorenson Video 3 is available in both Standard and Professional Editions. The Standard Edition is available for QuickTime users on Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 or Windows operating systems. The Standard Edition has the compression controls for data rate, frame rate, and key frame intervals. In addition, there are some advanced features applied to compressions with the default settings
"Adoption of QuickTime 5 has been phenomenal, with downloads topping 15 million in just two months," said Frank Casanova, Apple's director of QuickTime Product Marketing. "QuickTime's open architecture allows customers to easily add great new codecs like Sorenson Video 3
The Professional Edition is used to compress raw video content to a much lower bit rate and file size while still maintaining high quality, even at very low data rates. The Professional Edition has the fine control necessary to handle all types of video, from interviews to sports footage.
Sorenson Video 3 Professional Edition includes support for two-pass VBR compression, support for a binary alpha channel, automatic scene change detection, compression time packetization for error resiliency to packet loss, and chroma-key segmentation compression. Sorenson Video 3 also has enhanced watermarking and the media key feature has been enhanced to use secure encryption.
Pricing and Availability
Sorenson Video 3 Standard Edition is included for Mac OS 9 and Windows customers as part of Apple's QuickTime 5.0.2, available at www.apple.com/quicktime/download. Mac OS X customers can obtain the Sorenson Video 3 update through a component download in Mac OS X's QuickTime System Preference panel. Additional information is available at www.apple.com/quicktime/download.
Sorenson Video 3 Professional Edition (Macintosh and Windows versions) is available now and can be purchased by calling the Sorenson Media order line at 888 767-3676 or via the Web at www.sorenson.com. Customers can also find a list of local Sorenson Media resellers on the Web site.
Pricing is set at $499. Sorenson Video 2 users can upgrade for $349. An introductory upgrade price of $249 is being offered to customers until August 31, 2001. There is no cost to upgrade to Sorenson Video 3 for customers who purchased Sorenson Video 2 after April 2, 2001.
About Sorenson Media
Sorenson Media (www.sorensonmedia.com) is the global leader in video compression technology. The company's innovative encoding applications and award-winning video delivery solutions enable users to quickly and affordably deliver high-quality digital video files over the Internet. Sorenson Media's video-streaming technology is used on more than 600 million PCs worldwide. The Sorenson Squeeze Compression Suite has garnered many major industry awards, including Macworld Best of Show, and Video Systems 2004 Vanguard Award. The firm's compression codecs are licensed by a host of Fortune 500 companies.
