CTO Mike Flathers to Discuss Current Landscape and Progress of Codec Licensing, Patent Issues and Standardization

SAN DIEGO & NEW YORK CITY -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Sorenson Media today announced that CTO Mike Flathers will be joining other video thought leaders in business, academia, art, and activism at the 2010 Open Video Conference in New York City on Oct. 1 and 2.

“Codecs: Royalty-free Licenses, Patent Issues, and Standardization”

Flathers will join a panel of experts to discuss issues surrounding video codecs, including licensing, patents and standardization. This topic has attracted more attention during recent months as business owners navigate the ever-shifting and increasingly complex online video space. In May, Sorenson Media announced that Google had selected it as a partner in the VP8 format and WebM ecosystem. Google’s announcement regarding its open-source video format was made in the midst of an industry-wide discussion around HTML5 support of the h.264 video format.

“Sorenson Media is supportive of standards based efforts within the video space and online,” said Flathers. “From desktops and laptops to mobile and set top devices, video has permeated every aspect of the online experience and it is crucial that video producers and businesses are able to deliver that video to the end user where and when they want it. We have been leading the industry for more than a decade and feel like we empower content creators better than anyone else with our award-winning, versatile solutions.”

Sorenson Media has a long history of innovation in the mainstreaming of Internet video. In 1998, Apple acknowledged the superior quality of Sorenson Media’s video encoding technology by licensing the Sorenson Video 1 (SV1) codec for inclusion in the Apple QuickTime video player. Subsequently, in 2002, Macromedia (now Adobe) licensed the Sorenson Spark codec to enable video playback within Flash, followed by YouTube in 2005, making Sorenson Spark the most ubiquitous video codec in the world. Sorenson Squeeze continues to be recognized around the world as the gold-standard video encoding application, enabling users to encode files for delivery online in the highest quality and widest selection of formats.

“Think of Sorenson Media as being Swiss – we are codec neutral and support them all, making it easy for businesses to focus on their core business rather than on the increasing complexity of online video,” Flathers said. “That’s our job.”

Flathers will be speaking on the panel “Codecs: Royalty-free Licenses, Patent Issues, and Standardization” on October 2 at 10:45 a.m. For more information about the Open Video Conference, visit: www.openvideoconference.org. For more information about Sorenson Media’s differentiated video encoding and publishing solutions, visit: www.sorensonmedia.com. Sorenson Media CEO Peter Csathy also recently wrote about the issues surrounding video codec licensing on his blog, which can be found at: http://digitalmediaupdate.blogspot.com/2010/09/think-h264-is-now-royalty-free-think.html

About Sorenson Media
Sorenson Media is an award-winning provider of the highest quality, differentiated video encoding solutions. With highly scalable cloud- and server-based encoding solutions and desktop applications, Sorenson Media empowers the enterprise, video professionals and small-to-medium organizations to easily and affordably encode, manage and deliver the highest-quality video online. Since 1995, Sorenson Media has been at the forefront of bringing online video into the economic and cultural mainstream. As video rapidly proliferates online, businesses of all sizes rely on Sorenson Media's innovative solutions and legacy of trust to meet their evolving needs.

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