The introduction of tapeless workflows in our industry represents a paradigm shift in the way that we acquire, edit and deliver content. The ability to eliminate the capture process means that edited content can be turned around faster than ever before.

Tapeless workflows offer us an opportunity to reinvent the editing workflow. While the old process of ingesting from tape doesn’t apply, there are many other areas of the process that can be streamlined. For example, rather than logging a small amount of information for each segment of a tape as part of the capture process, we can now take care of all the information in a single session. And the whole idea of “export to tape” becomes less important, with delivery mechanisms going tapeless as well.

With these opportunities come challenges. The rigid production process imposed by the tape-based paradigm ensures that there is at least some consistency from facility to facility. With tapeless, freedom could mean chaos.

Editors need fast, efficient ways to log their content and to add additional metadata. With the increasing importance of metadata in workflows from broadcast to videography, getting that information into the editing workflow is important. I don’t think any one editing application has solved this problem, yet.

At Adobe we believe that true native editing is the best workflow wherever possible. In a tapeless world, true native editing means that you can start editing immediately without having to wait for rewrapping or transcoding. This enables extremely quick turnaround on content because you can edit directly from the camera without even transferring to the edit station. From a quality perspective, keeping the source around means the highest quality results because you’re always rendering from the original frames. And from a metadata perspective, it’s possible to add metadata to the original source files, which helps immensely when the assets are managed centrally.

The next few years are going to be very exciting in the editing world. We’re committed to finding new ways for you all to work more efficiently and productively!

Giles Baker

Group Product Manager, Editing Workflows.
Dynamic Media, Adobe.