Behind the Scenes Technology for The Prince of Egypt: MAXSTRAT Storage Servers Increase Animator Productivity for DreamWorks' Feature Released Today.

MILPITAS, Calif--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 1998--Behind the scenes at the making of the animated film, The Prince of Egypt, sit two black cabinets bearing the MAXSTRAT(R) logo. The sleek design of the outside of these Gen5-S XLE storage servers disguise the advanced technology inside that was so critical to the making of DreamWorks' first traditionally animated feature. MAXSTRAT's technology is what allows the large digital files created by the animators to be accessed so quickly and easily, thus increasing animator productivity.

Digital images are now crucial to animated film production. Hand-painted background images and hand-drawn animations are scanned as soon as they are produced. The process is completely digital from that point on. Both traditional and digital elements are then integrated to compose frames of the movie.

The 400 plus artists that might work on an animated feature need continuous access to these digital elements. They also need to be able to securely store new images as they are created and not worry about losing their time-intensive creations. MAXSTRAT's solution for animators is the Gen5 family of storage servers. At the DreamWorks production facility in Glendale, California, these storage servers are connected via 16 I/O paths to high-bandwidth servers, and together these advanced technologies allow animators to create, store, and retrieve detailed images with complete speed and efficiency.

Bill Villarreal, Head of Systems Operations for DreamWorks Animation, said that in recent tests, MAXSTRAT storage servers have demonstrated the ability to provide substantially faster delivery of digital images, therefore increasing animator productivity. Instead of wasting time while large scene files slowly download, animators can have much faster access to anything on the storage server. The Gen5's 24 internal paths to disk allow for low latency access to data. In addition, the Gen5 eliminates lost files by providing the flexibility of redundancy: multiple I/O paths to the servers, dual controllers, redundant power and cooling, and full RAID data protection.

DreamWorks continues to expand their production facilities, including the recent addition of 500 Gigabytes of MAXSTRAT storage. DreamWorks' total MAXSTRAT storage capacity is now over 1.5 terabytes, thus insuring continued animator efficiency on future projects.

About The Prince of Egypt

The Prince of Egypt tells the epic story of Moses, from the time he is set adrift in a basket on the Nile to the pivotal moment when he leads his people out of bondage to the Promised Land. Released world-wide today, December 18th, the film features the vocal talents of Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren, and Danny Glover.

About DreamWorks SKG 

DreamWorks SKG was formed in October, 1994 by its three principle partners Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen as a single company to produce live-action motion pictures; animated feature films and television programs; network, syndicated and cable television programming; records; books; toys; consumer products and interactive entertainment.

About MAXSTRAT

MAXSTRAT Corporation was founded in 1986 to provide reliable, cost-effective, high-performance storage servers for the high performance computing market. The Company's products are based on industry standards and are available in configurations for servers and workstations running data-intensive applications. Products are sold through a direct sales force in North America and many resellers and integrators throughout the world. MAXSTRAT is headquartered at 801 Buckeye Court, Milpitas, California 95035-7408. The Company can be reached by telephone at [phone], by fax at [phone], by email at [e-mail] or on the web at http://www.maxstrat.com. For public relations, please contact Ilene Adler at PR@VANTAGE (415-288-0400 or [e-mail]) or Sandy Aley at MAXSTRAT (800-352-1600 or [e-mail]).

MAXSTRAT is a registered trademark of MAXSTRAT. All brand and product names appearing in this press release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.