Charlotte, NC (May 17, 2005) - - LEAD Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of imaging developer toolkits, announced today the release of LEADTOOLS Multimedia version 14.5. LEADTOOLS is a collection of SDKs (software development kits) designed to help programmers integrate digital imaging into their applications. This much anticipated Multimedia release delivers numerous new features and enhancements to the LEADTOOLS Multimedia SDK, and also launches three new application developer toolkits: LEADTOOLS DVD Imager SDK, LEADTOOLS Video Conferencing SDK and LEADTOOLS Video on Demand SDK. Rounding out the release is a number of new video codecs. Now available is LEAD H.264 Standard and Professional video codecs as well as the LEAD MPEG-2 Professional video codec.

LEADTOOLS Multimedia -The new v14.5 LEADTOOLS Multimedia SDK is packed with new and enhanced features to help you simplify your application development while creating top of the line multimedia applications. You'll find support for new multimedia file formats like OGG and MPEG 1/MPEG 2; more control over multimedia processors, compressors, video and audio inputs, types and sub-types; increased camera control (brightness, contrast, zoom, etc); more flexible capturing options and much more!

New Features include:
- New multimedia formats including OGG, Network*, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.
- More control over multimedia processors, compressors and formats.
- More control over video inputs, audio inputs, types and subtypes.
- Media file information.
- Camera control (Brightness, Contrast, Zoom, Pan, etc).
- Ability to save capture, convert, and play settings to files and streams.
- Saving still bitmaps (BMP, JPEG, CMP).
- More flexible capturing.

LEADTOOLS DVD Imager SDK - The LEADTOOLS DVD Imager SDK extends the LEADTOOLS Multimedia toolkit by adding functionality for programmatically creating DVD images. The DVD images created can then be played back using DVD player software or burned to DVD for playback using a DVD player or drive. The DVD Imager SDK ncludes LEADTOOLS Multimedia, LEAD MPEG-2 Standard, and several DirectShow filters to resize and crop videos, as well as filters to convert video color spaces.

LEADTOOLS Video Conferencing SDK - LEADTOOLS Video Conferencing SDK has everything you need to create custom video conferencing applications and utilities. The SDK includes the LEADTOOLS Multimedia SDK for advanced multimedia functionality, and LEAD H.264 Standard Encoder/Decoder to encode and decode high quality video media. LEADTOOLS Video Conferencing can be used to create Client Server applications such as Security Server / WebCast – Single sever sending to multiple clients; Video Conferencing – Each computer participating in the conference is both a client and a server; and Live Presentations over the Web – Capture screen activity on a server and send to one or more clients.

LEADTOOLS Video on Demand SDK - LEADTOOLS Video on Demand SDK is perfect for developers who need to serve Videos on Demand, offering an unsurpassed multimedia experience while at the same time reducing bandwidth requirements. With LEADTOOLS Video on Demand, programmers can serve multimedia files using a standard IIS web server or with Microsoft Media Server. LEADTOOLS Video on Demand includes the LEADTOOLS Multimedia SDK and the LEAD H.264 Professional Video Codec.

LEAD H.264 and MPEG-2 Video Codecs - LEAD offers Standard and Professional versions of the new H.264 and MPEG-2 video codecs. H.264 is a high quality video compression algorithm and is suited for all types of applications with different ranges of bit rates. H.264 compressed video data can be stored inside AVI or OGG files with the option of saving the file with or without the audio data. MPEG-2 is a high quality video compression primarily targeted for applications that require higher bitrates or high bandwidth usage, most commonly DVD videos, Super VCD (SVCD), box top DVR's and digital television. For more information on LEAD's full line of video codecs visit www.leadcodecs.com.

Full evaluation toolkits are available free of charge from LEAD's website http://www.leadtools.com

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* Feature only available in LEADTOOLS Video Conferencing SDK


About LEAD Technologies
Since 1990, LEAD Technologies, Inc. has been a global leader in the imaging developer toolkit market, providing programmers with feature-rich tools to “image-enable” their software applications. LEAD Technologies pioneered the fastest software-only image compression and continues to lead the field in advancing new imaging technologies and offering those technologies to programmers world wide.