Frame.io, a leader in building software for collaboration, client review and sign-off, and cloud-based workflows in moving image productions, is being acquired by Adobe for $1.275 billion. Why is this such a big deal?
The combination of Adobe’s industry-leading creative software, with Premiere Pro and After Effects video-editing products leading the video production industry, and Frame.io’s real-time footage upload, review, and approval functionality, will deliver a collaboration platform that powers the video-editing process.
What Is Frame.io?
What It Might Mean for Adobe Subscribers
This means that if you're a Creative Cloud subscriber, it's going to be incredible. Being able to collaborate with colorists, editors, or VFX artists might even be included in your subscription, and getting client sign-off remotely, with the ability to comment on parts of the video on a per-second basis, is going to make us as video creators more efficient than ever. Adobe has already given us dynamic linking within Premiere Pro and After Effects, but this would almost be like dynamic linking between creatives, which is pushing the industry ahead.
The Competing NLEs
Da Vinci Resolve has built their editing software to incorporate cloud-based workflows, and AVID, the long-time NLE of choice for movie production teams, also has tools to collaborate efficiently. So, this doesn't put Premiere at the top, but in single-person productions, where one is looking to share and contribute to something bigger, this is surely going to be significant.
Conclusion
It seems as though Adobe is focusing on the editor who already uses Premiere and who's looking to grow. The progress is naturally from single-person bands, progressing to teams, and then agencies. At this point, it's usually wise to change your NLE to one that makes collaboration easier, so if they can get this way of collaborating to be part of the workflow in a way the teams are used to, it'll be hard to look at any other NLE for large productions. I personally hope Apple will also build a collaborative platform for Final Cut.
If you want to read up more about this acquisition, you can get the information from Adobe's blog.
I am using Frame.io right now for a high end production as VFX collaboration tool.
But I am not sure if the acquisition by Adobe is a good thing or a bad thing in the long run. Adobe has a lot of "construction zones" as I experienced again the hard way e.g. in After Effects.
Since I have the Adobe CC suite I might be happy when they incorporate it for the same price. If this is an additional service I wait for the price of their plans.
Let's see....
I agree, it would also not be great if the platform cannot be used by other NLEs, which, by the looks of things, will happen.