What Frame.io $1bn sale to Adobe says about the video production industry

Written by Michael Maximilian Moss
Co-founder & CEO at Nova A.I.

London, UK, (14 September 2021)

If you had a dime for every time, you read that video is on the rise, you’d probably be a billionaire by now. We all know it. Whether it’s the latest show on your favourite streaming platform, social media video content or marketing campaigns, video creation and consumption are experiencing tremendous growth. Video professionals must produce an ever-increasing volume of content across an ever-increasing volume of platforms in an ever-increasing number of different formats at ever-increasing speed to satisfy viewers, consumers, and followers. You get it – the word is “ever-increasing”.

If just reading about it makes you exhausted, you are not the only one. Add to this that video workflows are often complex, time-consuming, and expensive. That’s why more and more tools, particularly cloud-native SaaS tools (which is the future according to analysts at Devoncroft), are being developed to support video makers.

Movielabs (the studio consortium of Paramount, Sony, Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros) published a whitepaper in October 2019 titled, “The Evolution of Media Creation: A 10-Year Vision for the Future of Media Production.” The section “What could media creation look like in 2030?” says:

It’s still just 2021, but not only have multiple innovative start-ups begun building the tools that enables the future Movielabs speak of - they have already developed fully functioning cloud platforms, powerful enough to be used by the biggest production houses and broadcasters in the world (that includes our development from PromoMii). And the efforts of these young businesses and start-ups are being picked up by the biggest players in the video editing industry.

Have you ever heard of Frame.io? If you are not professionally involved with video production and management, you most likely haven’t. That is, until recently when Adobe acquired the company for $1.3bn. A company which is still a start-up and likely is not even profitable yet. For context, Frame i.o. is a cloud native production asset management which brings – and organises – shot content and in-process content from the production environment to the post-production environment, and then enables collaborative work across the post-production team.

So, what could this acquisition be an expression of?

Cloud / SaaS

Cloud (native) SaaS platforms are the future. With few exceptions, any supplier must transition to this business model as fast as possible and any professional in the media technology sector (customer or supplier) hesitating to move to the cloud is likely harming their organization in the long run. 2 months ago I wrote about some of the benefits of the cloud for video archives which you can check out here.

A Valuable Industry

The media technology sector is incredibly valuable, and its value is only going to increase. Not just because professionals are producing more content, but because everyone is. Whether you’re a coffee shop, a bank, an e-learning platform or a start-up, video as a means of communication is no longer just a nice thing to have – it’s a necessity.

The global video editing software industry alone was valued at US$ 1.94 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach US$ 3.04 billion by 2027; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.9% from 2020 to 2027.

Collaboration Matters

Cloud-native SaaS platforms have the potential to allow people to work better together and remove the barriers to collaboration as files and projects are more easily accessed. Working with video is, most of the time, a collaborative effort with multiple teams working on different areas of the content at the same time. From colourists to editors, VFX artists and sound designers. With more people continuing to work from home (you already know why) this potential becomes a necessity.

The Industry Is Ready To Transform

With a not so gentle nudge from the Covid-19 pandemic, the video production industry is ready for transformation and reform. Adobe’s acquisition acknowledges this. The industry is standing on the cusp of the next major change in the way that people work with video, which will be as profound a change as the transition from film to digital files.

Are you ready to join the video revolution?