NewTek Releases Expansive Video Toaster Upgrade

Now Provides More Than 600 Visual Effects And New Productivity Tools

CONTACTS:

Jim Parsons (NewTek)
(913) 228-8000

Hollie Wendt (Communications Consultant)
(408) 688-1193

April 15, 1996

National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), Las Vegas, NV - NewTek, Inc. today announced a new release of its Video Toaster Television-Studio-In-A-Box that allows users to sequence and play back graphic elements in real time. New features include enhanced integration between the system's production tools to improve efficiency and ease of use. The Video Toaster is used by both professional and home users for business and entertainment video production.

According to Tim Jenison, Chairman and Founder of NewTek,

"Video is the new literacy; it makes communication clear, concise, and interesting. With this announcement, we're making even more of that power available not only to television studios but to businesses, schools, and other organizations that have professional communication needs on a shoe-string budget."

Video Toaster 4.1 includes major upgrades to all nine software applications in its video production suite, as well as a new clipboard-like functionality that allows users to more productively integrate actions such as accessing live video frames and adding text.

Key individual software applications include:

• LightWave 3D™ 4.0, an animation tool for creating three-dimensional photorealistic graphics. Video Toaster owners have the option to add LightWave 5.0 to their system for $295. This new release includes more than 100 new features (see separate release for details), headed by the implementation of MetaNURBS™, a modeling tool that combines the power of splines with the ease of polygon modeling.
• The new video switcher provides the ability to configure groups of the most commonly used effects, which then become available at the touch of a button. Additionally, the video switcher now allows users to create a storyboard from video inputs and graphic elements such as still frames, character generated text, and effects, and play the storyboard in real time.
• The character generator (ToasterCG™), a tool for adding text to video, ships with 100 new Adobe PostScript™ fonts, which can be rotated, scaled, and sheered. ToasterCG now has a plug-in architecture that features a spell checker and other utilities.
• ToasterPaint™, a 24-bit video graphics tool, now offers two new painting modes, a new airbrush, full-screen implementation, and better integration with other Video Toaster applications.

Nonlinear, Tapeless Editing With Broadcast Quality Through The Flyer

Through the recently introduced Flyer add-on card, Video Toaster users can instantly access and edit clips located anywhere on video hard drives, with quality that meets the NTSC RS-170A specification for broadcast-quality video. VTASC™, NewTek's proprietary data compression algorithm, makes the Flyer the first nonlinear video editor to meet this standard directly from the harddrive.

The Video Toaster: A Television-Studio-In-A-Box

The Video Toaster provides all the tools necessary to produce broadcast-quality video at a price that is affordable to home users, while enabling professional video producers to maximize production quality within a fixed budget. The Video Toaster includes the broadest range of video production tools available in a single product, including video switching, character generation, and 2D and 3D graphic tools. The signature ability of the Video Toaster is overlaying animated video transitions across the screen in real time; no other product offers this capability in the price range of the Video Toaster.

The Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software that includes nine video production applications. Its unique design of hardware can be reconfigured by each software release, allowing NewTek to provide customers with dramatic new capabilities with each upgrade. Currently running on Amiga workstations, the Video Toaster is also in development for versions on additional platforms.

Availability and Pricing

The Video Toaster release 4.1 is now available immediately through more than 200 dealers and 25 distributors worldwide.

U.S. list price for the Video Toaster 4.1 software upgrades is $549.

The complete Video Toaster package is priced at $2395.

The Company

NewTek, Inc. is the leader in providing full-featured video editing and special effects tools at a price that allows anyone to produce professional video and graphics. The company's products are used worldwide on projects from home video to feature film and have won awards for television shows such as Babylon5 and Star Trek. NewTek headquarters are located in Topeka, Kansas in the middle of the Silicon Prairie.

Video Toaster is a registered trademark of NewTek, Inc.
LightWave 3D, Television-Studio-In-A-Box, Flyer, ToasterCG, ToasterPaint, VTASC, and MetaNURBS are trademarks of NewTek, Inc.
Amiga is a trademark of Amiga Technologies.
PostScript is a trademark of Adobe.