Interview: Adobe Director of Video Project Management Bill Roberts
Jan Ozer sits down with Bill Roberts to discuss the trends impacting the future direction of Adobe Creative Suite for video pros, including the decline of 3D, the rise of 4K, and second-screen viewing. Other topics included the growth of Creative Cloud, and the development arc of Apple Final Cut Pro X.
Final Cut Pro X
SMP: How has Final Cut Pro X impacted the marketplace?
Roberts: Well, Premiere Pro has gone from number 3 to number 1 among professional users, and adoption is growing at rates consistent with previous years.
Part of that was Final Cut Pro X disappointing some of Apple's professional users, but a lot is Premiere Pro simply maturing and operating as the hub of the Creative Suite workflow. As you know, we had many users in the past who bought the suite because it was an affordable way to acquire Photoshop and After Effects; many didn't use Premiere Pro at all.
When I joined the company three years ago, it was clear that we were entering an age where the suite couldn't succeed unless Premiere Pro was successful; it's the tool where the project has to come together and it has to be a world class hub. In the past, we had a useful collection of tools; now we have an end-to-end workflow, from Adobe Story and Prelude in pre-production and ingest, to Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, and Audition during production, and Adobe Media Encoder and Encore for rendering and final output.
SMP: What's your take on an integrated tool like FCP X vs. separate components like the Creative Suite?
Roberts: There are two reasons producers want a separate tool. First, it's the interface, which should be optimized for the task at hand. For example, Premiere Pro is about assembling multiple clips over time, and the interface needs to be optimized for that. After Effects is about layering and effects, and the interface has to present a spatial relationship of content which may have temporal element as well. Jamming both functions into a single interface would hamstring both operations.
The second reason producers want separate tools relates to division of labor. When you have multiple professionals working on a project, they perform different functions at different times, and need separate tools working with content pulled together in Premiere Pro. You want a simple tool for ingest so a newbie technician can use it, and other mission-specific tools matching other production functions.
All that said, as a standalone product, Premiere Pro offers a broad range of functions available in other suite components, like audio editing, effects, title creation, and the like. But the standalone suite components dedicated to these functions provide a better interface and much deeper feature set.
With Final Cut Pro X, Apple identified a very clear market segment for the product: the iMovie producer who wanted more functionality in an affordable product. Apple will do quite well in that segment. It's just not a major target for the Creative Suite.
FCP X is also a very prescriptive product; things work the way Apple wants them to, with no deviation. That's great for consumers, but many professionals have developed their own workflows over the years, and didn't want to abandon them. There were also a significant number of producers who had built workflows on Final Cut Pro XML and were left high and dry.
With so many production-related factors shifting on the landscape, from camera formats to output formats, what video producers want from the developer of their production tools is an anchor point that demonstrates consistency in action, openness in direction, and a partner who values their input. Apple did very well with professionals with Final Cut Pro 7; but there was a big disconnect between their existing users and their target users for Final Cut Pro X. That's what produced all the commotion.
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