St. Louis, MO, January 25, 2000-- HEURIS, makers of the most widely used professional MPEG encoder, and Spruce, a leading provider of DVD authoring tools, today announced a new bundling arrangement. Spruce will bundle HEURIS’ MPEG Power Professional-2 version 2.0 with Spruce’s new DVDStationNLE, based on Spruce’s popular DVDConductor version 2.5. Spruce’s new DVDStationNLE along with HEURIS’ MPEG Power Professional will provide the customer with a complete DVD encoding and authoring tool. This package easily converts projects created on Avid (via the OMF file format), Media 100 and other QuickTime nonlinear editing systems to DVD compatible video and audio streams. These streams can then be manipulated within DVDStationNLE to create powerful and professional DVD applications.

The DVDStationNLE bundle makes it easy to create MPEG files for DVD. The user simply selects the specially designed "Spruce DVD" template within MPEG Power Professional to create MPEG-2 streams suitable for DVD applications. The user then pulls those MPEG-2 files into the media bin in DVDStationNLE to begin building the DVD. The whole process is very simple and intuitive, allowing the user to concentrate on creativity instead of technology.

"DVD development needn’t be technically difficult, if you have the right tools," says HEURIS President, Brian Quandt. "With the new DVDStationNLE bundle, DVD developers can move from their nonlinear editing system, through a high-end professional MPEG encoding system and a professional level DVD authoring system, to DVD quickly and easily. This allows them to focus on what’s really important—developing exciting and meaningful DVD content."

HEURIS’ MPEG Power Professional-2 version 2.0 is a powerful new upgrade to HEURIS’ award winning MPEG Power Professional software. This new version makes full use of Apple’s G4 with Velocity Engine and Intel’s PIII MMX/SSE instruction sets for significantly faster encoding times. In addition, the new upgrade offers source file concatenation and frame-by-frame control over every aspect of the encoding process.

"Spruce pushes the price/performance envelope with features that you find in encoding packages that cost many thousands more," says Spruce Project Manager, Brian Lane. "We are excited to marry the best in authoring features with HEURIS’ MPEG Power Professional, the fastest and best quality encoder for industry standard file formats."

DVDStationNLE is available as a ready-to-use solution at $9,995, but may be upgraded as the customer’s needs grow. The DVD Power Pack option is available to provide power-user DVD features including Memory Management for 128 virtual registers (GPRMS), Playlists and many other features. For the most advanced entertainment applications, the system can be upgraded to a full DVDMaestro, Spruce’s flagship authoring system for entertainment and high-end requirements. In addition, MPEG Power Professional can be upgraded to offer Variable Bit Rate encoding and many other powerful features.

About Spruce Technologies, Inc.

Spruce Technologies develops and markets DVD authoring software and MPEG encoders for the corporate, new media, and entertainment markets. Based in San Jose, California, Spruce combines the best Silicon Valley software expertise with extensive DVD, MPEG and video postproduction knowledge. For more information, contact Spruce at 408-861-2200. Additional information about 

About HEURIS

Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, HEURIS is the developer of the most widely used professional software MPEG encoder, MPEG Power Professional. This award-winning, cross-platform software product is the first MPEG encoder to deliver the features and encoding quality demanded by professionals, without the expensive hardware. MPEG Power Professional is used by professional video editors and other creators of digital content to convert video, film, animation, special effects and graphics clips into MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 streams. MPEG is used with CD-ROMs, DVDs, video kiosks, and over the Internet. HEURIS has been working with MPEG since 1991, and its customers include: The Colorado Rockies, Sea World, The Mirage hotel in Las Vegas, the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, Taco Bell Corporation, The Home Depot, AT&T Labs, IBM, Boeing, Vanderbilt University, Boston Museum of Science and the U.S. Military. HEURIS can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.heuris.com

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