CNN Interactive Selects Virage to Provide Searchable Video; Microsoft's Bill Gates Testimony is First Use of Searchable Video on CNN.com.

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 6, 1998--Virage Inc. has announced that CNN Interactive has selected its premiere product, the Virage VideoLogger(TM) software, to provide searchable video of Bill Gates' testimony in the Microsoft antitrust case.

Users can go to http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/video/gates/ to search the video for any subject matter covered during the first two hours of the released testimony. As additional tapes are released by the Department of Justice, they will be added to the site, giving visitors easy access to all of the released testimony by Microsoft's chairman and serving as a valuable reference.

Searchable video allows people to quickly and easily find the topics they are interested in by entering a keyword or phrase describing the subject. They are instantly taken to the segment(s) of the video that match their query and from there, they can read a transcript of what is being said or play the streaming video that accompanies that segment.

"Adding this new feature, which gives users the ability to search information-rich video, is a great tool to help our users understand this complex story," said Jeff Garrard, senior executive editor of CNN Interactive. "Searchable video takes advantage of the interactive nature of the Internet, giving people the opportunity to save time in locating and viewing specific subjects of interest to them. It also fits exactly with the way that they are already accustomed to finding text-based information on the Web."

"In the last couple of months we've seen confirmation that the Internet has matured to the point where it is now considered a viable, sometimes preferred, medium for disseminating video," said Paul Lego, chief executive officer of Virage. "The line between television and the computer will continue to blur, ultimately converging into a high bandwidth, interactive and end user driven medium. As this happens, Virage's ability to make video searchable will provide the critical foundation technology that enables people to see what they want, when they want it."

Virage introduced searchable video to the consumer marketplace a little more than a month ago, with President Clinton's federal grand jury testimony at http://video.altavista.com. Virage makes video searchable with the company's VideoLogger software, transforming an opaque video source, with little more than a label or file name to describe it, into a searchable, navigable asset that can be shared via the Internet or corporate intranet. Using Virage's patented media analysis technologies, as well as third party technologies, the VideoLogger watches, listens to and reads video to intelligently extract metadata such as keyframes, time codes, textual information and an audio profile from the video in real time. This information can also be supplemented by user-defined clips and annotations. Together, it serves as a rich, frame-accurate index that provides immediate access to any part of the video, in the same way that a card catalog unlocks the wealth of knowledge in a library.

While indexing video, the VideoLogger can also control the synchronous encoding/digitization of a low-bandwidth version of the content, such as RealVideo or Windows Media. This digital video is lined up precisely with the index so that users can navigate through the video by selecting a keyframe, word or marked clip -- going to the exact point in the video that is desired before playing it back from that point. The index data and digital video can then be integrated into a wide array of applications, including flat file systems (e.g. HTML); news automation systems; edit suites; database management systems and media asset management systems, providing people with a virtually limitless number of ways to incorporate searchable video into their operations.

Additional digital video encoding services for this project were provided by Encoding.com, the first digital service bureau solely dedicated to optimizing and encoding audio and video for the Internet and intranets.

About Virage Inc.

Virage is the pioneer and recognized market leader in image and video search products. The Virage VideoLogger software sets the standard for real-time indexing and distribution of video across the Internet or corporate intranets and has been named the market winner by industry analyst group Frost & Sullivan. The company's Visual Information Retrieval (VIR) engine is the most widely adopted image recognition technology available today. Virage customers in the television, Fortune 1000, government, post production, Web publishing, higher education and advertising markets rely on these products as the critical foundation technology for more effectively deploying media within their operations. Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., Virage was founded in 1994 to provide organizations with advanced methods for accessing and leveraging media assets. For more information, see the Virage Web site at http://www.virage.com or call 650/573-3210.

About CNN Web sites

The CNN Web sites generate more traffic and attract more unduplicated Internet users than any other company's general news and information Web sites. The CNN Web sites, which served more than half a billion page impressions in September 1998, consist of: CNN.com; CNNfn.com, a unit of CNN Financial News; CNNSI.com, a joint sports site with Sports Illustrated; AllPolitics.com, a U.S. political news site produced in conjunction with TIME magazine; CNN CustomNews, a personalized news service operated with Oracle technology; CNNenEspanol.com; CNNemPortugues.com; and Svenska CNN, a Swedish-language news site produced with Scandinavia Online.

Virage is a registered trademark and VideoLogger is a trademark of Virage Inc. All other names or marks may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.