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

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 specialised 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 personalised 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.

Maximising 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 features 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 digitising 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 players 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 personalised 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.

In addition, Easy Media Creator 8 now includes DivX 6 support to enable the creation, editing and playback of high-definition DivX media files. Furthermore, 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 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 optimise 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 later this month directly from Roxio at www.roxio.co.uk and at the beginning of November, in over 5,000 retail stores throughout Europe. It will be priced at £59.99 SRP (inc VAT). Registered owners of Roxio and Sonic products, as well as owners of select competitive products, may be eligible for special upgrade offers.

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 http://www.roxio.com.

About Sonic Solutions
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.