Adobe Anywhere for Video

The Video Road by Karl Soule

I’ve been quiet about a new technology coming from Adobe, called Anywhere for Video, not because I didn’t have anything to say. Rather, I’ve been trying to keep the excitement to myself until the time was right. Every time I get to play with the technology, I end up giggling hysterically, since my brain keeps trying to tell me what I’m doing shouldn’t be possible.

I first got the opportunity to work with a VERY EARLY version of this technology back in Feb/March of this year. Keep in mind that this was an early “proof-of-concept” version, so I need to stress that what I played with may not represent the final product. It didn’t even have a name at that time. But what I got to touch was mind-blowing. I sat down at Premiere Pro, and began to edit. This was XDCAMHD 50 422 footage. JKL playback in the Source monitor was super-smooth. Inserting clips onto the timeline was super-smooth. Adding effects and transitions between clips worked just like I expected they would. The kicker? The footage was on a server over 1000 miles away. Quality during playback was nearly indistinguishable with the original media, and if I paused on a frame and blew it up full-screen, it WAS the original frame.

There are very few technologies that make me cackle maniacally, but Anywhere did it. Many Many times.

At NAB 2012, we did the first public-facing demonstration of this early collaborative editing technology. I edited onstage in Las Vegas, and then handed off what I was working on to Dan working up in Seattle. The footage we were editing on was on a server in San Jose, California. And the time to pass an edit back and forth took seconds. read more...