Convera's Screening Room to Power the National Geographic Television Film Library

VIENNA, VA, October 31, 2001 -- Convera (Nasdaq: CNVR), a providerof software products that access unstructured information for theenterprise and government markets, today announced that Convera’sScreening Room has been selected as the video content managementsoftware for the National Geographic Television (NGT) Film Library.Screening Room will be used to digitize and index thousands of hours ofvideo.

As video is ingested into digital form, National Geographic’sFilm Library will use Screening Room’s Browse feature to searchfor, preview and repurpose these video assets--all from anInternet-enabled desktop computer. National Geographic Television willalso provide preferred customers with secure, online access to thevideo archive enabling them to select and license copyrightedmaterial.

“Our immediate goal is to use Screening Room to provideproduction staff at NGT and the National Geographic Channel withunfettered access to a wealth of video resources and stockfootage,” said Matthew White, Vice President, Film Library atNational Geographic Television. “In addition to streamlining ourbroadcast production process, Screening Room will also make it easierfor other clients to search our video archive and select footage thatmeets their needs.”

“The Digital Media Archive project represents one of thelargest deployments of Convera’s Screening Room software todate,” explained Patrick Condo, president and chief executiveofficer, Convera. “We view this as a long-term relationship inwhich our products and services will enable National GeographicTelevision to fully leverage and monetize its video assets.”

Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, Convera will supply twoScreening Room Capture servers at National Geographic headquarters inWashington, DC. National Geographic staff will use the software toingest analog film and video footage into digital form.

Nearly 100 National Geographic employees worldwide will havecontinuous online access to the archive via Screening Room’sBrowse interface. The primary users of the system will be productionstaff at NGT and National Geographic Channel.

Nearly 2,000 hours of video had already been digitized by NGT andwill be transferred to the Convera system. Another 2,000 hours ofexisting analog footage will be ingested into the system over the nextyear. In addition to digitizing archived footage, Screening Room willbe used on an ongoing basis to ingest and catalog National GeographicChannel and NGT programming along with associated B-roll footage.

Long-term plans call for further commercialization of the DigitalMedia Archive. Ultimately, NGT plans to integrate ScreeningRoom’s WebSearch interface into its Web site.