Avid and Microsoft announced their collaboration that enables Avid to deliver professional video and audio postproduction solutions that support VC-1, the proposed SMPTE standard based on Microsoft Windows Media Video 9. Avid plans to provide native support for VC-1 in upcoming versions of its digital nonlinear video-editing products, as well as its Digidesign and M-Audio digital audio production solutions.

"Our agreement with Microsoft to support VC-1 will enable improved workflows for our customers by making it easy to publish and share media for review and approval, and encode media for Web distribution and DVD authoring," said Mike Rockwell, chief technology officer at Avid. "Native editing of VC-1 will also enable quick broadcast of material sent in from the field via network transfer. It's the first workflow of its kind that offers dramatic time and cost savings. We are pleased to work with Microsoft to break new ground in digital media production and distribution."

VC-1 has reached the critical step of Final Committee Draft (FCD) status with SMPTE's C24 Technology Committee, in which it is officially referenced as SMPTE standard 421M.

VC-1 is under consideration by a number of other standards and industry organizations, and completion of the work with SMPTE will allow interested parties to make a simple reference to the SMPTE standard to standardize it within their group.