MONTREAL, February 23, 2000 - Softimage Co., the Montreal-based subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID), proved once again that old habits die hard. Nearly nine years after Softimage first helped dinosaurs walk the earth in Steven Spielberg's `Jurassic Park, the world's foremost developers of creative technology are back on familiar ground. This time, the giant, computer-generated beasts are for ``Walking With Dinosaurs'', a series of educational programs produced by the UK's BBC network and created by FrameStore, a computer design and visual effects facility in London, England.

The series, which aired previously in the UK, Germany and Japan, consists of six weekly episodes, and is now being broadcasted in French (as ``Sur la terre des dinosaures'') on Radio Canada at 19:30 every Sunday night until April 2nd. The series uses amazingly realistic computer animation to display and explain recent scientific discoveries and theories concerning the long-ago life of dinosaurs. The series will also be broadcasted in the US in April on the Discovery Channel.

Making heavy use of 3-D animation, ``Walking With Dinosaurs'' relies entirely on Softimager 3D, the Montreal company's flagship system, for creating the oversized lizards in all their scaly glory. With approximately three hours of top-quality animation and feature film quality realism, the system proved instrumental in helping the animators achieve their high aims for this project.

``It was the program that the animators and I all wanted to use. Softimage was the one package that we knew would fit in with the project. The system made our job much easier,'' said Mike Milne, Director of Computer Animation at FrameStore.

Tim Haines, who produced the project for BBC Horizon, singled out FrameStore to handle the animation, effects and post production for ``Walking With Dinosaurs'', mainly due to the company's past work on such projects as the Emmyr Award winning mini-series ``Gulliver's Travels''.

FrameStore's so-called Dino Group, comprising a total of thirteen animators who worked for the better part of 18 months on the project, created all the dinosaurs and made them move using the Softimage 3D system. For enhanced authenticity and believability, a team of six paleontologists lectured the Dino Group on precise characteristics and movements of the extinct creatures; additional realism was obtained through the assistance of three sculptors who created over 30 dinosaur models for reference.

Softimage first made international headlines in 1992, when the company's revolutionary visual effects system was used to create the dinosaurs for Spielberg's ``Jurassic Park'', which quickly became the most successful film of all times, setting a then box-office record and garnering numerous awards, mostly for its innovative filmmaking techniques and spectacular visual effects.

ABOUT AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC.

Avid Technology, Inc., of which Softimage Co. is a subsidiary, is an international, industry-leading provider of digital audio and video tools for information and entertainment applications. Avid's products are used by a variety of customers worldwide including film, television and interactive content producers, TV news broadcasters, corporate communicators and consumers. For more information, visit Avid's Web site at http://www.avid.com or the Softimage site at http://www.softimage.com.

SOURCE Softimage Co.; Avid Technology, Inc.