Sonic Foundry Introduces New Live and On-Demand Streaming Solution At Streaming Media East.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 11, 2001

MediaSite Live(TM) offers timely, easy and convenient corporate communications alternative amidst current travel slowdown and reduced

corporate spending

Sonic Foundry(R) Inc. (Nasdaq: SOFO), a leading provider of rich media software, systems and services, today unveiled "MediaSite Live(TM)" to the attendees of Streaming Media East in New York City. Sonic Foundry's newest rich media publishing product offers the ability to easily capture, synchronize and present live video, speech and graphical content on-demand to the desktop - making it the industry's most integrated streaming solution available today.

MediaSite Live captures live video, audio and screen graphics and streams the content to viewers who are participating in the live rich media event, complete with polling and Q&A interactive components. The Webcast, presented in three distinct panes dedicated to different types of content, can then be replayed on demand. Its `direct capture from pc' capabilities provide companies with the benefit of rapid setup and deployment without the aid of expensive technical or production personnel.

"As travel and meeting costs have escalated, the amount of information conveyed and required to conduct business has continued to build," said Rimas Buinevicius, CEO of Sonic Foundry. "MediaSite Live gives companies the flexibility they need to communicate quickly, effectively and professionally, regardless of where they are located. For meeting organizers, MediaSite Live offers the most cost effective solution for delivering information to the widest possible audience. For participants, it means having the convenience of receiving the full breadth of information from an event directly at their desktop."

MediaSite Live's extensible architecture allows captured content to be easily incorporated into other Sonic Foundry solutions, including the company's MediaSite Publisher(TM), which makes content easier to find, access and use by providing search, highlights and navigation capabilities. Through indexing and ease of navigation, MediaSite Live content becomes more valuable to the presenter and participants alike. Applications for Sonic Foundry's MediaSite Live include: company product launches and product-related learning, CEO speeches, earnings calls, damage control or crisis communications, conferences and tradeshows, seminars, corporate training, news announcements, telemedicine and live distance learning.

Sonic Foundry's introduction of MediaSite Live, part of its Media Systems suite of enterprise products, marks the second new offering Sonic Foundry has announced since its October acquisition of MediaSite. The continued swift rollout of new innovative products reflects Sonic Foundry's strategy to rapidly leverage and unify the two companies' complementary technologies into enterprise applications that capture, manage, and provide access to video, audio, biometric, text and other forms of data -- all from a single, cost-effective media platform.

The MediaSite Live solution offers an integrated workstation that includes all software and hardware in a single system for capturing, encoding, synchronizing and transmitting streams of rich media to the hosted application. It can be deployed virtually anywhere as a simple stand-alone appliance or as the primary streaming device in a larger video production apparatus.

Additional product features include:

- Advanced media processing technology to deliver the highest quality audio,
video and imaging

- Workstation connectivity directly to presenters' laptop computers enabling
the capture of screen content in real-time, thereby eliminating the need to
supply and sequence slides in advance

- Simple wizard-driven setup and configuration

- An audio-only mode option to support bandwidth-sensitive environments

- One hundred percent browser-based access, so participants do not have to
download a client application

- First to market native RealOne Support, allowing MediaSite Live to take full
advantage of RealOne's unique three-pane user interface

- Polling and Q&A capabilities for moderated presentations, enabling
interactive audience participation

- An easy-to use interface with built-in help support for audience participants


- Scalability with built-in redundancy to support large numbers of simultaneous
users and sessions

- Automatic creation of local media archiving - requiring no separate storage
for backup

- Administrative tools for managing multi-workstation, recurring, and
large-scale operations

MediaSite Live is available in two configurations: as a service provider option or as a fully installed system for customers that have the infrastructure to support rich media communications. For more information, contact the company's Media Systems Division at [phone] or visit its Website at www.sonicfoundry.com.

About Sonic Foundry

Sonic Foundry(R), founded in 1991, is a leading provider of professional rich media solutions with offices in Madison, Wis., Santa Monica, Ca., Pittsburgh, Pa., and Toronto, Canada.

Sonic Foundry Media Systems (formerly MediaSite) provides a full suite of products for the customized development of rich-media applications and scalable solutions that allow media and entertainment companies, as well as corporate enterprises and government agencies, to deploy, manage and distribute video content on IP-based networks.

Sonic Foundry Media Software develops sophisticated software tools for the creation, editing and publishing of digital multimedia. Production professionals use its Sound Forge(R), ACID(TM), Vegas(R) Video and Vegas(R) Audio tools worldwide for everything from music creation and mastering, to non-linear digital video editing and streaming media development.

Sonic Foundry Media Services is the pre-eminent supplier of digitization, management, and delivery solutions for various industries, with emphasis placed on services for the entertainment sector. These services consist of conversion, reformatting, and encoding of television, film, and audio content for multiple delivery platforms. Serving as the link between content and customers, the services enable media delivery through existing and emerging distribution channels.

Certain statements contained in this news release regarding matters that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Because such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, uncertainties pertaining to continued market acceptance for Sonic Foundry's products, its ability to succeed in capturing significant revenues from media services and/or systems, the effect of new competitors in its market, integration of acquired business and other risk factors identified from time to time in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.