Sigma Designs Unveils the First MPEG Authoring Solution for Less Than
$4,000

RealMagic Producer is the first product to take advantage of Microsoft's
newly announced AVI Editable MPEG file format

FREMONT, Calif, February 7, 1995 -- Sigma Designs, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIGM), the
world's leading manufacturer of MPEG interactive multimedia computer
products, today debuted RealMagic Producer, the easiest, most affordable
solution for creating professional MPEG full-screen, full-motion video
multimedia presentations and titles. RealMagic Producer also represents
the first MPEG authoring product to fully comply with AVI Editable MPEG, a
new file format recently introduced by Microsoft Corporation and
co-defined with Sigma Designs.

RealMagic Producer is a complete MPEG authoring solution including a 32-bit
PCI-bus audio/video MPEG encoder board, Adobe Premiere editing software,
Caligari trueSpace 3-D animation and graphics software, and a frame
accurate video tape recorder (VTR) controller. Carrying a suggested retail
price of just $3,995 for the entire package, RealMagic Producer is priced
significantly below traditional MPEG encoding products which sell for more
than two to three times as much without allowing any video editing. This
dramatic price reduction enables MPEG encoding and editing to be
accessible to the average developer of titles, games, kiosks, corporate
presentations, educational titles, and training applications.

RealMagic Producer takes complete advantage of AVI Editable MPEG, a new
MPEG file format allowing frame accurate video editing using any
off-the-shelf AVI-compatible editing and authoring software tools. AVI
Editable MPEG is made up exclusively of MPEG intra-frames (I-frames) and
interleaved, synchronized MPEG audio. The image quality of the original
file is preserved through multiple compression/decompression cycles
without degradation. - more 

"RealMagic Producer demonstrates a major breakthrough in video editing on
the PC," said Julien Nguyen, co-chairman and chief technical officer of
Sigma Designs. "Now any multimedia author can create professional-looking
applications incorporating the video realism that only MPEG delivers. With
RealMagic Producer, authors have all the tools they need on a single
platform with a consistent user interface -- making MPEG authoring
extremely easy."

"The fast growing demand for MPEG-based content in the form of new and
innovative titles and applications has established the market for
RealMagic Producer," said Thinh Tran, chairman and chief executive officer
of Sigma Designs. "The ease of developing titles with RealMagic Producer
will cause an explosion of MPEG-1 titles to hit the market. In turn, we
expect this to create a tremendous increase in the demand for MPEG
decoders."

Multimedia developers can now produce an endless number of titles in-house,
maintaining full control over the entire process and dramatically
shortening the production process. RealMagic Producer allows developers to
capture and compress video and audio in real-time and store the
information as AVI Editable MPEG. The previewer allows adjustment of the
video bit rate while monitoring the quality of the playback image so the
best setting can be achieved for each video segment. The frames can be
edited with any AVI-compatible video editing tool -such as the included
Adobe Premiere 4.0 -- allowing easy addition of tides and animation.

"Adobe supports the new AVI Editable MPEG format by Sigma and Microsoft
because of its creation as an open standard," said Joyce Chung, product
marketing manager for Adobe Premiere for Windows. "This revolutionary new
technology increases the applications for Premiere, allowing users to
effectively capture, encode, edit and compress MPEG files."

RealMagic Producer accelerates the video editing, animation and titling
process by providing hardware assisted video compression. Following
animation and sequencing, edited video is processed by RealMagic Producer
to create a fully-compressed MPEG- 1 data stream that can be included in a
multimedia presentation or for distribution on CD-ROM or over a network.

"RealMagic Producer allows title developers looking to include
eye-catching, photorealistic stills and animation to do all digital
production," said Konstantin Guerieke, executive vice president fort
Caligari. "3-D is making tremendous in-roads into multimedia production
and our users will be thrilled to use trueSpace in an all-digital
production environment such as RealMagic Producer."

The processor at the core of RealMagic Producer is a C-Cube Microsystems'
next generation CL-4000, the industry's first single-chip, real-time
encoder and decoder, with custom microcode developed by Sigma.

"Sigma Designs is once again demonstrating its industry leadership with the
introduction of RealMagic Producer," said Alexandre Balkanski, COO and
co-founder of C-Cube Microsystems. "By leveraging C-Cube's single chip
encoder/decoder technology, Sigma is able to deliver the first low-cost
MPEG authoring system for the desktop."

System Requirements

RealMagic Producer requires a PC-compatible computer system with Pentium
processor or equivalent, a 32-bit PCI bus slot, a VGA or Super VGA
graphics card capable of displaying 256 or more colors, a
RealMagic-compatible MPEG playback board (driver release of 2.20 or
later), MS-DOS 5.0 or later, Microsoft Windows 3.1 or later, and one
serial port for controlling a video tape recorder.

A fully configured system for video capture and editing should also include
at least 16 megabytes of RAM, a SCSI hard disk drive and controller with
at least 500 megabytes of free disk space for video files,
SoundBlaster-compatible sound card, speakers, TV monitor and, of course, a
video source.

Pricing and Contents

RealMagic Producer has a suggested retail price of $3,995 and includes a
32-bit Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) controller card with
audio/video capture and MPEG encoding capabilities; a frame-accurate
software video tape recorder (VTR) controller, Adobe Premiere Version 4.0
video editing software; Caligari trueSpace Version 1.0 3-D graphics and
animation software; a training CD-ROM; required cables; and a user's
manual.

Availability and Warranty

Initial quantities of RealMagic Producer have already shipped to select
RealMagic developers. Volume shipments will commence in mid-March. A
one-year warranty on parts and labor comes standard with the RealMagic
Producer MPEG encoder board.

Sigma Designs, headquartered in Fremont, Calif., is the world's leading
manufacturer of MPEG-based multimedia products, including affordable MPEG
video and audio encoding and decoding hardware. All Sigma Designs products
are sold worldwide through a network of dealers, distributors and original
equipment manufacturers. For more information, call (800) 854-8086, (510)
770-0100, or fax (510) 770-2641.

Sigma Designs Inc
46501 Landing Parkway
Fremont, CA 94538
510-770-0100,  fax 510-770-2640

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