ITN Selects All-Digital Avid Workflow for ITV and Channel 4 News Services

ITN Selects All-Digital Avid Workflow for ITV and Channel 4 News Services

LONDON, June 4/PRNewswire/ --

- End-to-end Avid Solution Maximizes Newsroom Efficiency and Multi
Platform Distribution With Collaborative Production Environment

Avid Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AVID) today announced that ITN, the UK's
leading independent broadcast news producer, has completed the installation
of an end-to-end Avid(R) digital workflow to deliver its national news
services for ITV, including News At Ten and Channel 4. The system is built
around the Avid Interplay(TM) nonlinear workflow engine, the Avid iNEWS(R)
newsroom control system and the Avid Unity(TM) ISIS(R) media network, and
will enable ITN to effectively create and supply content for a broad range of
platforms including television, Web and Mobile phones. ITN will deploy the
new digital media solution to streamline the management of its various media
assets across a shared network.

"The media asset management tools available with Interplay, together with
a very high performance and scalable server in Avid Unity ISIS, embodied how
we felt a modern news production system should work," said Keith Cass,
Director of Technology at ITN. "Avid has a proven track record in nonlinear
editing and many years of experience in media asset management and production
servers. This experience, together with the proven success of Avid systems in
other news organizations such as the ITV News Regions, made Avid an obvious
choice."

Cass continues: "This is one of the most collaborative projects I have
ever worked on and it really shows in the delivery. Both ITV News and Channel
4 News wanted to put more control in the hands of the production journalist,
so key newsroom stakeholders were involved right from the beginning of our
workflow definition and continued through to its delivery. As a result we
have a much better understanding across the technical, production and
editorial departments about how the system should be used and what the
strengths and limitations are in the system. We are confident, thanks to the
collaboration between Avid, our Newsroom teams and our technologists, that
Avid's Interplay/ISIS system will take ITN's news production to another
dimension, giving us some of the most sophisticated and modern newsrooms in
the world."

The new fully digital workflow is powered by:

- an Avid Interplay solution for integrated asset management
and workflow automation;

- an Avid Unity ISIS media network with approximately 160TB storage
capacity;

- an Avid iNEWS system as the Newsroom Computer System (NRCS);

- more than 40 Avid AirSpeed(R) systems to handle ingest-to-playout,
controlled by Avid iNEWS Command;

- more than 100 editing stations, including Avid NewsCutter(R) XP
systems and Avid Interplay Assist seats which provide editing
capabilities with desktop video tools for logging, shot selection and
review.

Paul Glasgow, general manager of Avid UK & MEA, said, "Modern
newsgathering is all about handling digital video files in the most efficient
way and being agile enough to innovate and roll out new services at short
notice. The Avid systems enable multiple concurrent workflows to coexist,
utilizing a common Interplay and ISIS infrastructure. This has provided
significant operational improvements and business efficiencies across the
ITN-hosted ITV and Channel 4 News operations."

Channel 4 News went live on the new system at the end of January 2008,
and the ITV News went on-air in April 2008.

About Avid Technology, Inc.

Avid is a worldwide leader in tools for film, video, audio, 3D animation,
gaming and broadcast professionals - as well as for home audio and video
enthusiasts. Avid professional and consumer brands include Avid, Digidesign,
M-Audio, Pinnacle Systems, Sibelius, Softimage and Sundance Digital. The vast
majority of primetime television shows, feature films, commercials and
chart-topping music hits are made using one or more Avid products. Whether
used by seasoned professionals or beginning students, Avid's products and
services enable customers to work more efficiently, productively and
creatively. Avid received an Oscar(R) statuette representing the 1998
Scientific and Technical Award for the concept, design, and engineering of
the Avid Film Composer(R) system for motion picture editing. For more
information about the company's Oscar, Grammy(R) and Emmy(R) award-winning
products and services, visit http://www.avid.com.

About ITN

ITN is one of the world's leading news and multimedia content companies
creating, aggregating, packaging and distributing news and other
multi-platform content to a wide range of customers around the globe.

In the UK ITN produces news programmes for ITV1, ITV London, Channel 4,
and More 4 as well as supplying news to over 250 commercial radio stations
(IRN). ITN also produces Setanta Sports News, the 24 hour sports news channel
jointly owned by Virgin Media and Setanta. ITN's multimedia division ITN On
has led the way in producing news and entertainment content for mobile and
online platforms including Vodafone, T-Mobile, MSN and Yahoo. ITN On's
content can also be viewed on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/itn) and Bebo.

ITN Source is one of the world's leading providers of motion imagery,
representing the largest collection of moving image libraries in the world,
selling video clips from over 800,000 hours of footage captured over three
centuries. As well as ITN's own news material, ITN Source represents the
British Pathé, Reuters, Channel 4 (including E4, More 4 and Film 4), Granada,
FOX News and FOX Movietone content libraries.

ITN's headquarters are in London with international bureaux and offices
in New York, Berlin, Beijing, Brussels, Paris, Sydney, Johannesburg, Bangkok
and Tokyo.

For further information please visit http://www.itn.co.uk or
http://www.itnsource.com

(c) 2008 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Product features,
specifications, system requirements, and availability are subject to change
without notice. Avid, Digidesign, Film Composer, M-Audio, Pinnacle Systems,
Sibelius, Softimage, Sundance Digital, Avid Unity ISIS, Interplay, iNEWS,
AirSpeed, and NewsCutter are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Avid Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other
countries. Academy Award and Oscar are trademarks and service marks of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Emmy is a registered trademark
of ATAS/NATAS. Grammy is a trademark of the National Academy of Recording
Arts and Sciences, Inc. All other trademarks contained herein are the
property of their respective owners.

Source: Avid Technology Inc

Media Contact: Wendy Mattock, Bubble & Squeak, T +44(0)7912-300231, E wendy@bubblesqueak.co.uk

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