IBC 2012: Adobe Provides Broadcast & Media Solutions

Adobe unveiled new products, partners and promotion aimed at providing video solutions across the broadcast and media industries. At IBC 2012 (Hall 7.G27), Adobe highlighted its new Adobe Anywhere collaborative workflow platform and offered a new promotional pricing for individuals and organizations that want to switch from their current nonlinear editing solution to Adobe Creative Suite CS6 Production Premium and Adobe Creative Cloud.

Adobe Systems Director of Project Management Bill Roberts

"Customers today are concerned about getting their content out to multiple screens," says Adobe Director of Project Management Bill Roberts. "Adobe has been and is very successful in that part of the business. We've focused on "plan to playback" from Adobe Story through to Premiere, After Effects, SpeedGrade and then mastering with Adobe Media Encoder." According to Roberts, 60 booths at IBC 2012 are showing tools related to Adobe products.

Adobe Anywhere was the top new announcement from Adobe at the show. "It's about creating a new file-based workflow where collaboration becomes a first-class citizen in the way people work together," says Michael Coleman, Adobe Senior Product Manager, Collaborative Workflows, Professional Video. "We call it a collaboration platform because it ties together creative tools and enterprise systems like storage and MAM. Adobe Anywhere connects creative clients no matter where they are."

Adobe Anywhere, which is scheduled to be available in 2013, is especially designed for broadcast organizations that produce video programming and need to create productions quickly and efficiently, regardless of location. According to Coleman, Adobe Anywhere is made up of two main components. "The collaboration hub is the brain behind it all," he says. "It's a multi-user, multi-application workspace, based on a scalable database and offering the same media, database and folder system." Adobe Anywhere collaboration means that users can share work without merging project files or re-linking media.



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The Mercury Streaming Engine enables remote access to media. "Collaboration is entwined with the ability to have remote workflows," says Coleman, who notes that the 64-bit high performance engine has been "made smarter" with streaming and network awareness, in real-time. "This allows us to provide it anywhere." Its last important feature is the ability of users to rely on tools they're already familiar with - After Effects, Premier Pro and Adobe Prelude - which means that no extra training is required.




"When customers are using Adobe Anywhere, they can instantly hand off media to anywhere," he adds. "Premiere Pro and Prelude users can use the same folder structure and the same media and work in the same space at the same time."



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Also at IBC 2012, Adobe expanded its roster of broadcast solution partners, which now tops 200 companies. New partners include arvato Systems, Axle Video, Cantemo, Chyron, Dalet, deltatre, Filmpartners, FlavourSys, EVS, Miranda, a Belden brand, Nexidia, Pond5, Primestream, PROMISE Technology, Studio Network Solutions (SNS), Sienna, Softron, Square Box Systems and Vizrt.

Finally, the company unveiled a new promotional offer for individuals and organizations that use either Apple Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer and want to switch to Adobe Creative Suite CS6 Production Premium and Adobe Creative Cloud. Purchasers are eligible for 30 percent off Production Premium or 40 percent off annual membership to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Adobe's focus on the broadcast market is a savvy move, and one that we'll no doubt see emphasized in April at NAB. Of course, Adobe Anywhere is a product that is potentially appealing to many other markets, and I'm eager to see the next step that Adobe takes to spread its message of working with familiar tools in an environment of "first-class citizen" networking.

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