IBC Q&A: Adobe’s Coleman and Mooney talk Adobe Anywhere, Creative Cloud enhancements

It’s been a very busy few months for Adobe, which converted its entire Creative Suite software portfolio to the SaaS-modeled Creative Cloud in May and shipped the much-anticipated Adobe Anywhere collaboration platform in July. Both products are now in full swing, and Adobe took to the IBC floor to highlight enhancements to both Creative Cloud and Adobe Anywhere.

Enhancements to Creative Cloud (Premiere Pro, After Effects, SpeedGrade, Prelude, Media Encoder, and Story Plus) unveiled at IBC include a new Direct Link Color Pipeline between Adobe Premiere Pro CC and SpeedGrade CC; expanded native support for 4K and higher resolutions, high frame rates, and RAW formats; and a streamlined editing workflow in Premier Pro.

On the Adobe Anywhere side, the company announced support for Adobe After Effects (previously the platform centered solely on Premier Pro and Prelude integration), expanded file support, and complimentary new iPad app that allows uses to view productions and play back sequences on the Anywhere server from a remote location.

SVG sat down with Adobe Anywhere Senior Product Manager Michael Coleman and Premier Pro Product Manager Al Mooney to discuss Adobe’s ascent into the world of the cloud and what that strategy means for the sports-production world.

How do the latest updates to Adobe Anywhere benefit users?
Coleman: In July, we shipped version one of Adobe Anywhere. At that time, we were just showing how easy it was to collaborate between an editor and a logger — Premier Pro and Prelude — but we were talking about a bigger vision overall. Now, here at IBC, we are proving that it is more of a full platform. There are more people involved in the workflow than just editors and loggers. You can’t make great video without everyone involved; you have graphics people and producers. So, with After Effects now being supported in Anywhere, you have more of the picture filled out. And with the iPad app, you can access the same video and sequences that your editor is working on instantly.

We are proving that this is a lot more holistic than just connecting Premier to Prelude. If you are building a full production, Anywhere can actually manage the entire thing. Everything you need for the production will be centrally located. The theme here is about expanding the platform.

Where do you see Anywhere fitting into the sports-production market specifically?
Coleman: I see a lot of potential in sports for Anywhere. I can imagine a future where every venue has an Anywhere server and is distributing and sharing that content all over the place. Think of all the coverage you can get from that stadium or arena without having to send an entire crew out. The owners of the media or the colleges can get their highlights and content out instantly without having to actually be [on-site]. So it is a better distribution model because we have put the content and the workflow system right there in the stadium. And it’s not very expensive at all to get that done.

Adobe has announced several new partnerships with other tech vendors. Why does integrating Premier Pro and Anywhere with these technologies make sense?
Mooney: If you look at what we are doing with third parties, we are finally seeing a lot of the key integrations come to fruition — most notably EVS. I’m so happy about that because these are the workflows that are going to really change the way our users work. We are winning a lot of new customers, and, obviously, we’re happy with that — as anyone would be — but I really think these third-party partnerships are going to be a difference maker to our customers both old and new.

Coleman: We have always been extremely open about [Anywhere]. It is our goal to have a lot of third parties involved to help our users and allow them to make choices. We have had great engagement from partners. At the show, we are announcing six different partners that have or are about to have direct integration with Anywhere. We are quickly working with even more Premier partners to bring them into Anywhere.

To have an entire workflow, you need a lot of pieces from a lot of different companies or a single company who believes it can offer you the entire solution. Our approach is to let you choose the best tool in every category and we will take care of editing and collaboration. But we absolutely want you to have the best storage and asset management and so on for your own operation. We now have this ecosystem exploding with new partners that give our users a lot more options, which is good for everyone.

How has the switch from Creative Suite to Creative Cloud affected Adobe from a technical standpoint over the past few months?
Mooney: When we used to talk about a 12-month period, it was all about “that was the last release and here is the next one.” But, with Creative Cloud, we have already had two major updates and a third coming. We can just be so much more agile and responsive than we could before.

Fundamentally, we don’t want to change the way an editor works; we want to make an editor’s life better and easier. So, with Creative Cloud, when the market tells us loud and clear, we no longer have to wait to do it. It may take a while to code, but, when a feature is ready to go, we can immediately ship it to our Cloud Subscribers. It shouldn’t change the way that you work; it should only add to your workflow and make it easier. The most important thing is how committed we are to being engaged with the editors and listening to them, hearing their requests for features as well as their problem and solving them.