The lines that separated the “productivity” applications from Microsoft, Adobe and Google have long been blurring and video – from production to distribution – is shaping up as the latest battleground for these software titans (e.g. Microsoft’s Silverlight versus Adobe’s Media Player). These thoughts crystallized as I watched the speakers from Adobe, Sony and Forbidden Technologies discuss their video editing programs at the Video Production Crash Course at NAB. That video is becoming this generation’s word processor is evidenced by the rise of User Generated Content sites like YouTube. Site’s like YouTube also point to the need for easy-to-use tools that allow producers to improve their video quality (instead of a spell check, imagine an annunciation check). Tools are increasingly making it easier for anyone to turn the vision in their head to one that is on the web. Adobe’s hope is to turn the millions of Photoshop users into video editors through their CS3 product, which integrates photo, audio and video editing functionality into one interface. This product has the potential to revolutionize the creation of advertising, as anyone skilled in Photoshop has the potential to produce high quality video. Adobe’s Giles Baker provided an impressive demonstration whereby noise and a cell phone ring were “painted” away by the user, similar to the way a Photoshop artist would remove a blemish.
The impressive thing about the demonstration is that the user interface hid the complex technology required to accomplish this difficult task. A Google acquisition: That thought kept running through my head as I watched the presentation from Stephen Streater, CEO of Forbidden Technologies. Forbidden Technologies’ product is an online video editing tool for professionals. Used by the BBC, this approach eliminates the need for computers for editing and storage of video assets (the ingest and upload process still requires a computer or an Internet-enabled camera). It also allows online collaboration between people in disparate locations. Its features, such as online chat, multiple export options and simple-to-use edit timeline, impressed me with how similar it is to what Google is doing with its Desktop word-processing and spreadsheet applications.
Surname of Forbidden’s CEO is Streater not Streaker!
Oops, thanks for pointing out my mistake on the name (corrected). Sorry Stephen.
By the way, we had to disable the Anarchy Video Player on this site, as it was slowing down the performance. This is affecting the video in this post as well as others on this site..
Saw some NAB footage connected to this article that was published from Forbidden’s video platform (FORscene), is it still available on this site? Thx.
We were having problems with the Player we were using to display FLV files, so we disabled that player (has nothing to do with the FORscene). When we get a new player added to the site, we will let you know.
have been watching FORscene (Forbidden Technologies) evolve, had a chance to use a demo account, this product will go places, to use review feature with my partner who is in another location was great!