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The changing landscape of CS5 for Broadcast (part 2)

As I spoke previously, the landscape of broadcast has been changing. That perfect storm of change is forcing broadcasters to think differently about the how’s and why’s to get media out. 

As a recap, here are several of the issues facing media outlets today:
* Moved from analog to digital transmission.
* From standard definition to high definition (two flavors, not one by the way).
* We’ve gone from a couple of formats (betacam and DV) to an ever growing list of formats.
* The world has gotten even more media saturated meaning that content has to be even better.
* Broadcasters don’t worry about one screen (TV), they worry about three (TV, online, mobile)
* The world has moved from tape based (remember those?) to file-based formats.
* And oh, by the way, we’ve had an incredibly challenging economy that means capital expenditures (improving your equipment) have been difficult to say the least.

For this second of two parts, I will offer up some feedback that I’ve gotten from media executives around some of these challenges and how CS5 is addressing their needs.

To be completely transparent, I am going to say that I’m paraphrasing what I’ve heard from media executives (hey - I don’t have a photographic memory!) and that the companies will not be explicitly named. It needn’t be stated (but I will!) that Adobe works with EVERY major media company in the world given the impact and breadth of Adobe’s software portfolio.

Transitioning from SD to HD

“Premiere Pro has provided tremendous flexibility to allow us not to worry about the production element of the broadcast pipeline. As we transition to HD cameras, we can count on Premiere Pro to be there to support it.”

First off the move to HD has not necessarily been complete. While nearly all of the acquisition going on is now HD (SD cameras are almost completely gone), transmission can still largely be SD in many markets. This can present several issues. One of Adobe’s key customers is dealing with SD and HD stations. Consequently, they’re dealing with unique issues with cameras and production.  What if you have SD and HD cameras? What if (shudder) one of them shoots 4x3 only? Adobe tools and Premiere Pro specifically can handle all of these things without difficulty, which leads us to our next point.

Mixing different media types

“As we continue to amortize our hardware, it’s absolutely essential that our editing bays be able to use media from all different kinds of sources, be it tape or file based, or even user-generated content.”

That brings us to one of the significant key advantages that many broadcast companies have come to truly appreciate about recent iterations of Premiere Pro - namely, the ability to mix and match different codecs on the same timeline. Think about it, if you’ve invested $10k in a 16x9 DV camera a few years ago and now are transitioning to a file based HD format, there are reasons why you want to get more life from that camera. Two reasons are the photojournalist knows that camera inside and out and will get great images every time and also that camera cost $10k - get more life out of it!

Premiere Pro can seemlessly handle and mix different codecs, frame rates and aspect ratios on the same timeline without transcoding, without rewrapping and without waiting. It’s completely transparent to the editor, because they shouldn’t have to think about what any of the media is, they should just interact with and use it, right?

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