Why are Avid and Adobe collaborating?

Last week we announced Adobe Premiere Pro CC is now fully supported on our shared storage systems, Avid ISIS 5500 and Avid ISIS 7500, as a result of unprecedented collaboration between the two companies.

I’ve been asked why two companies who effectively market competing professional editing applications would want to collaborate?

After all, by doing this, aren’t we just encouraging the market to use Premiere Pro CC over Media Composer?

The answer is no.

For a long time the commoditisation of professional editing products – most editorial software is now available for as low as a £39 per month subscription fee – has given editors access to a wide range of professional tools.

It’s about giving customers the ability to choose, and interchange, between editing tools safe in the knowledge that their performance won’t be hampered by inefficient connectivity to the rest of the workflow.

With post-production and broadcast infrastructures built on solutions from many manufacturers, industry collaboration is essential to making the overall workflow more efficient. This leaves our customers to concentrate on doing what they do best – creating compelling content.

The flexibility to integrate third-party products easily into an Avid workflow is the main premise of the Avid MediaCentral Platform and delivers on the promise of Avid Everywhere.

With the Avid Connectivity Toolkit, third-party vendors can seamlessly integrate their products and services into the workflow of content creators and distributors across all solutions on the platform.

The openness of the MediaCentral platform enables partnerships with companies like Adobe to happen and gives post-production houses and broadcasters vital productivity efficiencies.

So what does this latest collaboration really mean for the industry?

Adobe Premiere Pro CC has worked on ISIS storage for several years, but its performance wasn’t optimised for ISIS, resulting in a lower bandwidth rating per ISIS engine compared to Media Composer.

Working together with Adobe to deliver enhancements to Premiere Pro CC, we’ve more than doubled its performance on ISIS.

For example, a system that could support 10 streams of playback (so five editors each with two streams) now supports 20 streams, allowing 10 editors with two streams each – or more streams per editor.

This enables more complex edits and the creation of more compelling content, no matter what editing system it is cut on.

As a result of this latest collaboration, video professionals can now experience the most flexible and efficient workflows regardless of their choice of editing application.

Stay tuned for more news about our collaborative efforts at Avid Connect 2015 and NAB 2015.

• Kevin Usher is director of product and segment marketing for Avid’s Broadcast & Media division