Adobe adds Frame.io cloud sharing directly in red FujiFilm cameras

Adobe
ADBE
announced today that its cloud-based video collaboration capabilities for its Frame.io division will be integrated directly into Red and Fujifilm cameras, the purest expression of a decade’s effort to enable “camera-to-cloud” integrations create production units that connect with the remote teams who subsequently work on the resulting videos and stills.

“When you think of a camera, it’s just a computer with a lens on it, right?” said Michael Cioni, Adobe Senior Director, Global Innovation Creative Product. “These (cameras) now have the ability to connect directly to Frame.io and (other) Adobe (apps) from the camera menus, and there are no other devices, there are no other components.”

The new features will be available as firmware updates for both companies’ flagship cameras over the next few months, Cioni said. He called the deal “a new revelation in collaboration. And I really stand by the word ‘revelation’ here, it’s so significant.”

More content is being created than ever, and not just by teams of top Hollywood professionals. There are now dozens of notable film and television production centers around the world, from London to Bollywood to South Korea, Turkey, Mexico, Australia and beyond. Add in dozens of brands and agencies creating content with in-house and contract teams, and the bewildering array of emerging talent capturing significant audiences on social media, live-streaming, esports and beyond, and it’s a a lot of.

And more and more of these teams are collaborating remotely, with post-production work on editing, color grading and visual effects, executive/client reviews and approvals, and more.

“How do these teams create this content,” said Cioni. “They need solutions to improve their speed and scalability so they can fuel the global economy with more content. Is that what motivates the idea of ​​how we can really improve speed and scope? And at what level can we do that?”

For high-end, Hollywood-style productions, Red’s V-Raptor and V-Raptor XL can upload Redcode 8K resolution raw video files directly from the menus of the cameras themselves.

Such direct uploads of huge 8K files would require an extremely strong internet connection, something Cioni acknowledged is often unavailable on set. But even in the short term, with faster 5G wireless connections becoming widely available, cameras will be able to upload native ProRes proxy files that contain “every ounce of asset metadata available in the camera.”

Such proxies are lower resolution files that are easier and faster to move and edit with today’s editing systems and networks before full resolution files arrive for exchange. Demos show automatic transfer of an 8K resolution RAW R3D file, a log file, a CDL, a PreRes proxy adjustment, a WAV, and a custom lookup table or LUT for each shot of the camera records.

For production teams filming high-end projects, the day-to-day production of recent years has involved a time-consuming and tedious process of moving and copying files from cameras or removable drives to hard drives that can be physically sent to the post-production operations. In a preliminary improvement on this process, Frame.io has signed agreements with dozens of service providers and camera manufacturers to build digital “hooks” into their hardware and software packages to connect to Frame.io for cross-system collaboration once the video is captured in cloud-based post-production systems.

“It also increases the flexibility and control you have over the way you work,” Cioni wrote in a white paper. “Imagine your camera footage being instantly backed up and accessible to everyone, with no drive to download or ship. As bandwidth increases, the expectation of instant access to footage becomes the most important component of an efficient workflow. As we advance the technology to include automatic file transfer on-camera, we are making tremendous strides towards achieving this goal for productions of all types, sizes and budgets.”

The Fujifilm deal concerns the X-H2S, which is targeting a significantly different industry sector than Red. The X-H2S has recently received strong reviews for its flexibility as a highly capable and flexible digital still camera and as a camera capable of recording 6K resolution video.

X-H2S connectivity requires the use of a separate Fuji add-on, the FT-XH, which handles internet file transfers for the camera. In his whitepaper, Cioni wrote that such real-time sharing “will be particularly useful for multidisciplinary creative teams, allowing assets such as still images and graphics to be easily organized along with videos in the same Frame.io project.”

This can unlock a new production pipeline for still photographers at live events like weddings, sporting events or concerts, allowing them to send content as it’s being shot, allowing remote teammates to retouch, share or post the shot without waiting for a physical memory card to arrive need to show.

The new features will be unveiled this week at the Adobe Max Creativity Conference, which officially opens today in Los Angeles.

Adobe acquired Frame.io for nearly $1.3 billion about a year ago and earlier this year began offering the cloud-based review/sign-off/collaboration tool for free in its Premiere Pro video editing suite and other apps.

Frame.io has been working with film service companies and hardware for more than a decade to better integrate its collaboration tools. The service is now widely used in various segments of the video production industry.

Enabling remote collaboration between widely dispersed groups of creators has been a priority across the industry, especially since the pandemic hit and upended filmmaking practices, policies and pipelines.

Earlier this year, Blackmagic Design announced its own low-cast collaboration system, designed to leverage connections between its do-everything software suite, DaVinci Resolve, and its wide range of production hardware for various segments of the industry.