AVID'S BEYOND REALITY TAKES ELASTIC REALITY SPECIAL EFFECTS TECHNOLOGY TO NEXT LEVEL; Powerful New Silicon Graphics-based Application Extends Animation and Image Manipulation Capabilities of Award-winning Elastic Reality Product Family.

LOS ANGELES, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 8, 1995--At Siggraph '95, Avid Technology (NASDAQ: AVID) announced Beyond Reality, a new addition to its Elastic Reality family of special effects applications for broadcast, film and multimedia. Beyond Reality leverages the Elastic Reality product line's unique "shape-to-shape" user interface to deliver unrivaled power and flexibility in creating 2D and 3D hierarchical animation, character animation, warping and morphing effects and performing color correction on the Silicon Graphics platform. Beyond Reality also features compositing, matting, image management and format conversion capabilities.

"With Beyond Reality, we started with our award-winning Elastic Reality product, then we incorporated a wide range of new creative features and increased flexibility," said Michael Stojda, senior product manager with Avid. "Beyond Reality empowers a wider range of users to create the ultimate in special effects."

"Beyond Reality is a natural progression of the Elastic Reality product family," said user Peter Moyer, president of Digital Film Works in Los Angeles, Calif. "2D and 3D motion effects combined with total file format independence make Beyond Reality one powerful product. More importantly, Beyond Reality provides new capabilities that make visual speech synthesis a painless and cost-effective process."

Beyond Reality is scheduled for availability in September for a suggested retail price of $9,995 (U.S.). In addition, Beyond Reality is a featured component in the Avid Media Spectrum, the first all-digital, disk-based online suite including all the capabilities needed to finish programs that require the highest level of sophistication and quality.

Key features to Beyond Reality include:

    o 2D animation: Unlike most morphing systems, which force users
      to treat one video roll as the "source" and another video
      roll as the "destination"  for effects, Beyond Reality lets
      users assign multiple rolls as sources.  For example, if
      one roll shows a stationary man talking and the second
      roll shows a stationary woman talking, Beyond Reality lets
      users take the man's head and combine it with the woman's eyes,
      nose and mouth and place these elements onto a different moving
      image all in a single step.

    o 3D animation: Beyond Reality goes further than traditional 2D
      animation tools by providing sophisticated shape editing tools for
      manipulating shapes in true 3D.  Objects receding into
      the distance or approaching into the foreground, for example, are
      automatically adjusted to maintain proper perspective.

    o Hierarchical animation: Any Beyond Reality shape can be used to
      define a motion path for other sets of shapes.  A solar system
      animation, for example, could assign a moon or a satellite to
      orbit the earth, the earth (and its accompanying objects) to orbit
      the sun, and the sun (and its orbiting objects) to circle the Milky
      Way or another galaxy.

    o Character animation: Building upon Elastic Reality's character
      animation capabilities, which were used most notably on
      the multiple Academy award-winning film Forrest Gump, Beyond
      Reality provides ARLo (Animation Reference Library), a
      user-definable catalog of reusable character positions for
      character animation and speech synthesis.  Appropriate
      character positions, such as vowels and other movements, can be
      dragged and dropped into key frames with automatic integration
      to the actual footage.

    o Advanced color correction: While most systems provide color
      correction only on a scene-by-scene basis, Beyond Reality performs
      color correction on any number of individual objects, each
      with independent color characteristics.

    o Compositing and matte-making: Beyond Reality offers an
      unlimited number of different matte layers which can be
      defined and processed at once.

    o Image management and format conversion: Beyond Reality includes
      a site license for Image Independence, the industry's acclaimed
      image management and format conversion utility.

    o Keystone compliance: Beyond Reality is one of the first
      applications to be compliant with Silicon Graphics' Keystone
      initiative, ensuring users ease of use and operation within the
      powerful Silicon Graphics environment.

As recent additions to Tewksbury, Mass.-based Avid Technology's powerful product line of digital media solutions for film, broadcast and multimedia, Elastic Reality products include a range of award-winning cross-platform special effects and image processing technology for SGI, Windows, Windows NT, Windows '95 and Macintosh/Power Macintosh platforms. Special effects created using Elastic Reality products have been used on feature films such as Forrest Gump, The Mask, Stargate, Star Trek: Generations, Timecop, Tank Girl, and television shows including Northern Exposure and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Avid is a registered trademark and Beyond Reality and Media Spectrum are trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. Elastic Reality is a registered trademark and ARLo and Image Independence are trademarks of Elastic Reality, Inc., a division of Avid Technology, Inc. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Kara Misenheimer,

Avid Technology, Inc.,

508/640-3103

or

Michelle Goodall,

Schwartz Communications, Inc.,

617/431-0770, x215