OS/2 - THE OPERATING SYSTEM OF CHOICE FOR MULTIMEDIA

With the introduction of OS/2 2.1, OS/2 has become the operating system of
choice for delivering multimedia to the desktop and the network.

The 32-bit power of the OS/2 operating system, combined with the integrated
multimedia capabilities offered through the Multimedia Presentation
Manager/2 (MMPM/2) offer endusers and application developers a uniquely
powerful and full-featured multimedia platform.

In addition, a wide range of multimedia tools that enhance the power of
OS/2 multimedia are either available or in development. These include
traditional tools for image editing and multimedia application
development, as well as more sophisticated technologies for everything
from image recognition and linking of images to databases to
video-on-demand servers.

32-BIT PERFORMANCE MEANS SUPERIOR MULTIMEDIA - The combination of a 32-bit
operating system and preemptive multitasking means that OS/2 offers the
high performance that translates into better multimedia. Multimedia makes
tremendous demands on any computer -- open more than a 16-bit operating
system can handle. OS/2 offers a 32-bit operating system designed with the
power to handle multimedia. OS/2's preemptive multitasking means that the
computer can literally do two things at once, allowing it to
simultaneously play back any mix of audio, video, animation or graphics
with virtually no loss of quality.

POWERFUL MULTIMEDIA EXTENSIONS - Included as part of OS/2 2.1 is IBM's
Multimedia Presentation Manager/2 (MMPM/2), a comprehensive set of tools
for working with multimedia. These tools include: a digital audio
player/recorder; media players offering a powerful but easy-to-use
interface for playing MIDI digital audio, digital video, audio compact
discs and laser video discs; and a data converter that converts the
formats of audio and graphics files. The appropriate media player launches
automatically when you click on any multimedia file within the OS/2
Workplace Shell. For developers, the capabilities of all MMPM/2 tools are
all accessible through IBM's Media Control Interface (MCI) commands.

FULL SUPPORT FOR MULTIMEDIA PERIPHERALS SUCH AS AUDIO BOARDS AND CD-ROM -
OS/2 supports a wide range of popular computer peripherals for multimedia,
including: audio boards such as IBM's M-Audio Capture and Playback
Adapter, Media Vision's Pro Audio Spectrum and Creative Labs'
Soundblaster; and CD-ROM XA (Extended Architecture).

FULL-LENGTH FILE NAMES - OS/2 allows users to give multimedia files names
that mean something. . .up to 256 characters. This eliminates the problem
of trying to figure out what's in a file by its 8 character name.

A USER INTERFACE THAT MAKES MULTIMEDIA EASY - The OS/2 interface itself
makes it easy to work with multimedia. Notebooks, which look like their
physical counterpart, allow users easy access to device controls and
settings. Users can move through a notebook one page at a time, or click
on tabs to move from one section to the next.

ADVANCED SOFTWARE MOTION VIDEO - OS/2 supports both IBM's own Ultimotion
and Intel's Indeo digital video standards. Ultimotion offers both the
convenience of software-only compression and the video quality critical to
successful multimedia applications. Standard Ultimotion resolution is
320x240 pixels at 15 frames/second, four times what is offered by similar
video solutions. Ultimotion can also yield up to 30 frames/second or
resolutions of up to 640x480, and excels at both 256 and 65,000 color
depths. All Ultimotion video is software-scalable at playback. Support for
Intel's Indeo video standard offers a cross-platform video solution with
hardware-based scaleability to Intel's higher-quality Digital Video
Interactive (DVI) technology.

MULTIMEDIA-ENABLING OTHER APPLICATIONS IS EASY - OS/2 offers the integrated
multimedia capabilities that make it easy to add multimedia to other
applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets, and databases. For
example, an audio-enabling macro built into OS/2 allows users to quickly
and easily add voice annotation to any cell in an Excel for OS/2 or Lotus
1-2-3  for OS/2 spreadsheet. Programmers can use five high-level macro
functions to record, play and manipulate compound multimedia file
elements.

SOPHISTICATED SOFTWARE TOOLS FOR MULTIMEDIA - A range of software tools are
available to allow users and developers to take full advantage of the
multimedia power of OS/2. New IBM offerings include: Ultimedia Perfect
Image/2, an image processing program that can resize, enhance, copy,
paste, crop or rotate digitized images; and Ultimedia Builder/2,
easy-to-use authoring software that lets users create exciting multimedia
applications incorporating video, sound, images, animation and special
effects. Both of these products are currently in beta, and should become
generally available in Summer 1993 . Builder/2 and Perfect Image/2 are
just two of the products in IBM's Ultimedia Tools Series. The Ultimedia
Tools Series is a comprehensive family of multimedia tools, includes more
than 60 world-class software offerings from IBM and over 3 0 independent
software vendors. The series is designed to provide multimedia users at
all levels with a "one-stop-shop" for tools that can help them work with
and use multimedia.

THE ABILITY TO LINK DATABASES AND MULTIMEDIA - OS/2 tools like Ultimedia
Workplace/2 allow users to link libraries of multimedia information, such
as images, with a wide range of traditional databases. This makes it
possible for the first time to-easily integrate multimedia into
company-wide information systems, mission-critical applications and other
corporate applications involving databases. Also, Workplace/2
automatically creates thumbnail images for every image file, allowing
users to instantly see what they look like, without opening them up. For
audio and video files, generic thumbnails are automatically created which
can be customized by the user. Ultimedia Workplace/2 is currently in beta,
and should become generally available in Summer of 1993.

IMAGE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY IN DEVELOPMENT - IBM is also developing
breakthrough image recognition technology for OS/2. Ultimedia Manager/2,
which enters beta testing in June, 1993 will offer users the capability to
automatically classify, search for, identify and sort images by color,
texture, shape, layout or text descriptions. Ultimedia Manager/2's
sophisticated visual query capabilities offer multimedia developers,
photographers, desktop publishers and many others the ability to quickly
search large computer-based libraries for images and graphics that meet
specific criteria.

POWERFUL MULTIMEDIA NETWORKING TECHNOLOGY - IBM's LAN Server 3 0 for OS/2
offers advanced networking capabilities for multimedia, including the
ability to support up to 40 continuous streams of video, animation or
graphics to OS/2, Windows and Macintosh clients. In addition, IBM is
developing Ultimedia Server/6000 advanced multimedia networking software
for OS/2. Ultimedia Server/6000, which enters beta testing in July, 1993,
is software that allows an IBM RISC System/6000 Server to deliver more
than 40 continuous streams of video, audio, animation or other digital
multimedia to OS/2 clients across client/server networks. In addition to
OS/2, future client support is planned for Windows, Macintosh, AIX and
other platforms. Ultimedia Server is designed to allow organizations to
create distributed multimedia applications such as video-on-demand,
movies-on-demand, networked multimedia information kiosks, video mail, and
interactive just-in-time training.

SUPPORT FOR WINDOWS AND DOS MULTIMEDIA - In addition to its own multimedia
capabilities, OS/2 provides comprehensive support for both Windows and DOS
multimedia applications. In fact, the power of OS/2 actually helps many
Windows and DOS multimedia applications to offer improved performance.

OS/2 HAS BEEN LAUDED AS A MULTIMEDIA PLATFORM - Industry experts have
already recognized the power of OS/2 multimedia. According to Tom Yager,
multimedia consultant and author of "The Multimedia Production Handbook
for the PC, Macintosh and Amiga," OS/2 offers "The most powerful PC
multimedia environment available. A good choice for multimedia application
developers," (Byte Magazine, April 1993). According to John Ruley, Windows
Magazine Columnist and Editor-at-Large, for the creation of
video-intensive CD-ROM applications, "Do not use Microsoft Video or
Quicktime; use IBM's Ultimotion. ..(Ultimotion) gets around all the
limitations of the other approaches. At CD-ROM data rates it gives... 1/4
screen VGA picture at 24 frames per second with rock solid video/sound
synch...Ultimotion was designed from the beginning to provide
synchronization of other media with video," (Windows Magazine, May 1993).

International Business Machines Corp
IBM United States
1133 Westchester Ave, White Plains, NY 10604

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