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Sonic Foundry Ships Mediasite RL400 Rich Media Recorder

October 22, 2004

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DENVER – Oct. 21, 2004– EDUCAUSE 2004, Booth # 1525 – Sonic Foundry Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), a leading rich media solutions company, today announced it is now shipping the latest addition to its award-winning suite of Mediasite™ rich media Web communications products, the Mediasite RL400. As the newest member of the growing Mediasite family, the Mediasite RL400 offers powerful advancements and ease-of-use capabilities that make it ideally suited for AV-ready environments, such as lecture halls, corporate training facilities and conference rooms.

The Mediasite RL400 allows organizations to take a modular approach to building a powerful rich media communications system. As a stand-alone presentation recorder, it allows users to instantly capture and replay presentations without a backend server connection, and immediately burn them to a CD. For more expanded capabilities, users simply add a Mediasite Server to enable live broadcasting, content management and Web publishing.

First introduced in 2002, Mediasite has quickly been embraced by universities and colleges throughout North America. To date, more than 67 higher education institutions are using Mediasite to capture and stream courses for Web-based distance education and to support in-class learning. Recent customer additions include the Georgetown University, Northwestern University, North Carolina State University, the University of Houston and, most recently, Villanova University’s College of Engineering (See yesterday’s related release: Villanova University’s College of Engineering Selects Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite).

Now on its fourth generation of Mediasite products, Sonic Foundry has continued to deliver customer-driven enhancements and product additions to its line of rich media presentation recorders that truly set it apart in the marketplace. As the only provider of real-time rich media recorders, the company delivers a powerful suite of products that provide the ultimate in simplicity, versatility and reliability. The Mediasite family includes: the new rack-mounted Mediasite RL400, the mobile Mediasite ML, the Mediasite VL video conferencing recorder and the Mediasite server.

“Sonic Foundry has raised the bar once again with the newest member of the Mediasite line of real-time rich media systems,” said Clint Thayer with the University of Wisconsin, Department of Medicine. “We have been using Mediasite in our Grand Rounds program for more than a year now and the advances in simplicity and versatility that the new Mediasite RL400 provides will help us become even more effective with our online lectures.”

Mediasite RL400’s unique dual-channel recording is based on exclusive real-time media processing technology that captures virtually any type of analog and digital output. It eliminates all the complicated and time-consuming authoring or post-production requirements of competing products, and delivers the unmatched speed and versatility people have come to expect from Sonic Foundry technology. With Mediasite, every aspect of a presentation is recorded transparently in real-time, can be accessed immediately and is ready for distribution instantly.

“The Mediasite RL400 is a breakthrough product that sets a new standard in simplicity and automation for recording and sharing rich media presentations, either live or on-demand. In short, we have reduced the complex workflow to a simple press of a button,” said James Dias, vice president of Sonic Foundry. “With Mediasite, organizations can record and distribute rich media presentations quickly and economically from any room equipped with basic AV readiness.”

The Mediasite RL400 features Sonic Foundry’s rock-solid architecture in a sleek, more compact rack design to facilitate seamless integration within lecture halls, corporate boardrooms and other AV-ready facilities. It also can be integrated into AV automation environments built with Crestron and AMX, giving presenters one-touch remote control capabilities without interfering with their presentation style or content.

“Increasingly, organizations are looking to rich media to enrich and extend communications,” said Steve Vonder Haar, research director of Interactive Media Strategies. “Products that make it easier to use online audio, video and multimedia collateral, such as the Mediasite RL400, will go a long way in helping to unlock rich media’s potential for transforming day-to-day communications activities in the enterprise.”

Mediasite was the first fully integrated system to provide real-time recording of multi-source, multi-format visual content from a variety of analog and digital sources and automatically turn it into Web-based interactive content for live and on-demand access.

The new Mediasite RL400 provides a variety of enhancements to improve functionality, AV integration and the end-user experience. Key new features and capabilities include:

    · VersaVisual™ – Patent-pending technology enables the capture of multi-source, multi-format visual content from a variety of analog and digital sources. Provides high-resolution playback with automatic visual index for navigation to any point in the presentation. Easily handles complex engineering diagrams, maps, photos, detailed medical imagery, intricate drawings and other applications where visual clarity is critical.
    · Real-time Technology – The industry’s fastest multi-channel encoding system compresses workflow to deliver a present-to-publish ratio that’s second to none. Rich media files are created up to 10 times faster than conventional Web authoring approaches to putting presentations online.
    · Server-free Recording Mode – Users now have the ability to record and playback rich media presentations without connecting to a server. Content can be burned to CD or USB media or sent to any type of storage server.
    · Control Systems Interoperability –The Mediasite Control Interface Protocol™ (MCIP) gives system designers the ability to integrate Mediasite recorders into their AV solutions by providing instant, touch-panel remote capabilities directly from any podium or lectern.
    · RapidRecord™ – DVR-like simplicity gives presenters the ability to quickly start and stop recording presentations on-the-fly. Content is available instantly.
    · Publish to Flash – Mediasite presentations can be integrated into rich applications based on the Flash platform making it compatible with all the popular desktop operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Apple and Unix and Linux.
    · Enhanced Security Management – New feature allows organizations to easily manage distribution and authorization of their content by providing various levels of user authentication parameters and thresholds for viewing content.

Mediasite RL400 (MSRP: $21,950) can be ordered through leading resellers and systems integrators located throughout North America.

About Sonic Foundry®, Inc.
Founded in 1991, Sonic Foundry (NASDAQ: SOFO) is a provider of rich media communications technology for the enterprise. The company’s high-performance rich media presentation systems are trusted by Fortune 500 companies, education institutions and government agencies for a variety of critical communication needs. Sonic Foundry is based in Madison, Wis. For more information about Sonic Foundry, visit the company’s Web site at http://www.sonicfoundry.com.

Contacts:
Terri Douglas
Catapult PR-IR
303-581-7760, ext. 18
303-808-6820 (cell)
tdouglas@catapultpr-ir.com

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