A Q and A with Adobe about Adobe Anywhere

When Adobe Anywhere was announced it was a happy surprise to most everyone in post-production. “Real-time collaboration” between editors anywhere in the world meant that the often pesky limitation of physical location could be a thing of the past. The demos were impressive and, quite honestly, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing the first time I saw it demoed. The product shipping a few months ago I have still been seeing a lot of questions and misunderstandings about what Adobe Anywhere is and what kind of gear one would need to implement it. I sent a Q and A over to the folks at Adobe recently to ask some of those questions.

The info in this Q and A isn’t necessarily anything new. Adobe themselves have an Adobe Anywhere FAQ pretty much provides some of the same answers. But that FAQ has been up for a while and I was still seeing some of the same questions asked, some of the same misinformation being spread. I don’t think anyone was passing along false information about Adobe Anywhere on purpose, I just don’t think Adobe did a very good job of explaining exactly what kind of hardware infrastructure you need to implement this solution. The information has always been there but I think early demos and presentations were more about how the product worked and what it could do as opposed to exactly what one might need to implement it. Adobe has created a white paper (pdf link) that addresses a lot of these same questions. There’s also a couple of videos that about the product that have been online for quite a while and they are embedded below.

The bottom line is don’t expect to connect the Adobe Premiere Pro install on your iMac or MacPro (with local Thunderbolt or internal storage) with another install out in the field or a fellow editor in another state via some magic Adobe Anywhere menu setting and expect real time collaborative editing. For many that seems painfully obvious as there’s no compression technology that amazing and not bandwidth pipe that big but there are those that have that impression. You’ll have to have a pretty serious and quite expensive hardware infrastructure for Adobe Anywhere to work. But if you’re an editor in with a company that has one of these systems then you might be sitting pretty for getting some editing work from a remove location. read more...