Adobe makes its cinema

I WISH AN INTERACTIVE, HAPPY, HAPTIC AND SURPRISING NEW YEAR!

Clearly Adobe reinforces its position in the cinema industry. At least 3 recent and symbolic projects illustrate this fact.

¬ CinemaDNG format
¬ Open Source Media Framework [formerly Strobe]
¬ Adobe Story application

Adobe CinemaDNG

Appeared on the Adobe Lab site, and with a similar objective than the DNG format in the photography world, CinemaDNG aims at supplying a common format for the cinema industry by adding elements to specifically support digital cinema workflows. By this format Adobe wants to bring standardisation between all steps of the cinema workflow by :

¬ capturing raw digital data directly from the camera’s sensor
¬ offering camera and software vendors an open, standards-based RAW format that can be widely understood across workflows.

Moreover the image encoding is based on the DNG specification and compatible with the TIFF6 and TIFF/EP specifications. CinemaDNG images can be stored in a directory structure, in an MXF (Material eXchange Format) wrapper, or transformed between these wrapping formats.
At last, Adobe certifies that the CinemaDNG format typically adds less than 1 KB overhead per image (Half the storage space of corresponding DPX files).

To go further in the CinemaDNG file format exploration, you may read :

¬ The CinemaDNG Image Data Format Specification, Version 1.0.0.0 (Sept. 2oo9)
¬ The CinemaDNG Workflow document.

and download the CinemaDNG Importer for After Effects CS4 and Premiere Pro CS4 and a file sample.

Press review
¬ Adobe Starts Initiative to Develop Open Format for Digital Cinema Files

Open Source Media Framework

The Adobe Flash Platform is the technological core component of the Adobe strategy. This platform aims at offering an universal, integrated and consistent set of technologies and tools to develop application and monetisize them for any kind of devices (see also the Open Screen Project). The Open Source Media Framework is one element of this platform. This project is intended to facilitate the development and sharing of open standards and best practices for video player applications built on the Adobe Flash Platform.

Stay tuned, I will soon publish a post about my analyze of the Adobe’s strategy! A very long article… But before reading my post, you may keep on discovering OSMF by downloading the framework and by learning the online OSMF API. Don’t forget to go to the Video Technology Center to complete your skills on video technologies.

Adobe Story

Adobe Story is a new internet and desktop application which aim at writing scripts for movies, theatre piece, cartoons, and so on. By its tightly integration with future versions of Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium, Story will play the starting role in the pre-production phase of a planning-to-playback workflow (see below) :

Source : Adobe Labs site

I try this new software more to understand how to write a scenario than to say if this software is well adapted for this kind of task! By the way, I should say that my first feeling is very good because this Story is quite easy to learn, especially after watching tutorial video and installing the BaywardSon script sample.

Adobe Story is a collaborative tool (offline/online mode, collaborative workflow, comments adding, etc.) consistent with the new Adobe graphical guideline (white-grey-black declinaison, fluidity, icons, UI components, etc.). Stay tuned I will explore this software in more details in a coming post! NEvertheless you can read the User Guide to discover deeper this application and download the AIR application to experiment it.

I scriptly recommend Adobe Story!