It felt like summer in Amsterdam, host city for the International Broadcasting Convention, Europe’s largest industry tradeshow. Inside the spacious RAI convention center thousands of visitors came to see the latest in film and broadcast technology – including previews of the next version of the Adobe Creative Cloud video applications.
To get to the RAI, you have to travel by tram, metro train, taxi, or even bicycle through scenic Amsterdam. Once you reach the convention center, you walk through crowds of people into a maze of giant halls, each filled with hundreds of exhibitors showing off their wares.
The Adobe booth is located in the heart of Hall 7, an attractive structure with a beautiful stage and seating for 80. Over 60 presentations were delivered there over the five days of the show, a mix of product demos, and awesome customer presentations. On the other side of the booth we had a row of demo stations where show visitors could get personal demos of Adobe Premiere Pro and the other Creative Cloud video applications and get answers to their questions. At the front of the booth, we had the information desk, where we got the chance to speak with hundreds of customers during the show. It was fantastic to see how happy people are with our products and the impressive delivery schedule since the launch of Creative Cloud, with literally hundreds of new features arriving over the past year.
IBC 2014 visitors were keen to see the new updates we were previewing, including new media and project management tools, like Search bins, Multi-project workflows, Consolidate & Transcode in Premiere Pro CC, and Destination Publishing in Media Encoder CC; new support for cutting-edge technologies, including the GoPro Cineform intermediate codec, HiDPI support for Windows 8.1, and more; and improved workflows, such as the awesome Preview Hover Looks in SpeedGrade and Grading Layer Grouping (not to mention long-awaited Curve adjustments and Blackmagic support in SpeedGrade).
It was wonderful to see how much interest there is in Adobe Audition: we had packed presentations for demos of the latest features coming to our rock-solid audio-editing application. People were blown away by demonstrations of the detail-preserving upscaling effect in After Effects, making it a practical option now to salvage existing SD, or even HD, assets for future delivery in 2K or 4K resolutions. Since Photoshop is widely used by video pros, we also had stage demos of the industry-standard image editing tool, including the new Photoshop Mix iPad application, which got a lot of attention.
Senior Product Manager Al Mooney gives a lively presentation at SuperMeet during IBC 2014
As always, the highlights at the Adobe booth were the presentations by our customers, including Philip Bloom, Rovio (makers of Angry Birds), Red Bull Media House, MPC, Karrot Entertainment (creators of Sarah & Duck), ITV, Swiss Radio & Television, LondonLive, the Weather Channel, and HBS and EVS (see interview with trainer Simon Walker). It’s amazing to see what people do with our tools, from the fun of Angry Birds, to the hands-on craftsmanship of documentary filmmaking, through to the complex production and delivery pipelines used for major sporting events, like the Sochi Olympics or the World Cup in Brazil this past summer. The only thing more fun than building the tools, is seeing what great artists and content creators make with them.
After the months of preparation for the IBC show, it’s gratifying to see how well everything was received, a great pleasure to speak with our customers, and a privilege to see the work they are creating. Now it’s back to work for all of us, putting the finishing touches on those releases: coming to your desktop very soon!
For more details on the upcoming updates to the Creative Cloud video applications, read our earlier post about the upcoming releases , download our IBC data sheet, watch this overview by senior product manager Al Mooney, or check out our IBC 2014 YouTube playlist.
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