INTERRA RELEASES MPEG-4 VERIFICATION TOOL.

Interra Digital Video Technologies, Inc. has begun commercial shipments of Interra M4, the company's new MPEG-4 conformance analyzer software. The Interra M4-1000 is the first release in the M4 product line and is targeted to organizations developing MPEG-4 products, turnkey systems, and network infrastructure.

MPEG-4 holds immense potential as a worldwide standard for multimedia delivery, but as MPEG-4 products and systems are released to the market the focus will be on how seamlessly the various products interoperate with each other. Solid conformance to the standard is the foundation on which interoperability is built. The M4-1000 is Interra's first contribution to this emerging industry, and represents phase one of its plan to supply the MPEG-4 professional community with a comprehensive set of cost-effective and easy-to-use test and measurement tools. Interra has received widespread acclaim as the developer of MProbe, the industry's leading file-based MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 stream analyzer.

"Interoperability between products from different vendors is a key advantage of the MPEG-4 standard," said Rob Koenen, president of the MPEG-4 Industry Forum (M4IF). "M4IF carries out interoperability tests between over 25 different vendors. Products like M4 will help achieve interoperability, facilitate the creation of MPEG-4 coders and decoders, and are a very welcome addition to the MPEG-4 infrastructure."

"Interra's M4-1000 has been an invaluable tool for us during the development of our new GoMotion MPEG-4 codec," said Richard Cowart, Chief Technology Officer of Ligos Corporation. "By providing a simple and powerful tool for spec conformance and video buffer verification, M4 gave us the freedom to concentrate on performance and quality. As a result, we were able immediately to achieve a level of interoperability with other MPEG-4 products that exceeded our expectations. In the same way that Interra's MProbe analyzer helped make our MPEG-2 products better, we expect M4 to deliver similar benefits in the development of our MPEG-4 technologies."

"Because MPEG-4 is a global standard, content owners have a right to expect universal interoperability," stated Paul Collins, Interra's vice president of Marketing. "The standard will need the support of content providers, who will want clear evidence that commercial MPEG-4 products interoperate reliably. The foundation for all of this is vigilant adherence to the MPEG-4 specification. We are pleased to introduce a tool that will help product developers achieve their conformance objectives and rapidly detect and diagnose the source of any problems."