Commentary: A Serious Acquisition Creates 更多的 Magic for Adobe

现在是收购的季节, 至少看起来是这样, as yet another niche software provider has been picked up by a giant software company. 上周早些时候, 苹果公司宣布收购Silicon Color公司, which makes high-end color correction software that works with Final Cut Pro. Then it was Adobe’s turn to add something to its suite of production products: the company announced that it was acquiring Serious Magic, 这家公司最初是以低成本起家的, high-quality greenscreen product but had branched into many different areas of production and had begun dabbling with webcasting and video blogging.

当Adobe去年收购Macromedia时, its stated intent was a marriage of Flash and Acrobat; that goal is being realized realized both with the introduction of the new Flash-based ebook reader that Adobe showcased at this week’s MAX user conference as well as with the increasing popularity of Flash Video. One Adobe spokesperson tied the increase in popularity of FlashVideo, which is Macromedia and Adobe’s name for the On2 VP6 codec, 直接促成了收购Serious Magic的决定.

“Flash视频背后的巨大动力, which is powering everything from online TV shows to YouTube and MySpace, 为Adobe的视频业务注入了强劲动力,约翰·洛亚科诺说, senior vice president of creative solutions business unit at Adobe, 在新闻发布会上. "The purchase of Serious Magic accelerates our vision to make not just video but all dynamic media an even more ubiquitous communications vehicle, whether you're delivering content for the broadcast market, 通过网络或移动设备."

Serious Magic的初始产品, ULTRA chromakey和虚拟套装软件, could play an important role should Adobe choose to get into the live streaming tools segment. Serious Magic long ago perfected the ULTRA’s ability to perform complex keying on a modest CPU. 这种键控能力, which used to require very high-end CPUs or dedicated digital signal processor (DSP) chips, was not the only trick in Serious Magic’s repertoire: the company also created a studio-in-the-box product, 视觉沟通, which scrolled teleprompter text and automatically launched pre-recorded video files, allowing a single person to create a believable news broadcast.

随着底层技术的进步, 该公司还推出了其他几个产品, 如DV Rack, which provides direct-to-disk recording and a many of the vectors and scopes and and other production truck-type diagnostics in a single piece of software, 还有两个额外的演示产品. 第一个是Vlog!, took 视觉沟通 and geared it toward consumers interested in adding video to their blog sites. The second product, Ovation, was built forf the enterprise market. While it appears at first glance to be just another PowerPoint presentation enhancement tool, Ovation provides teleprompting and sophisticated anti-aliasing of standard PowerPoint text, bringing the presentation quality closer to broadcast quality.

So, is Adobe likely to move into the streaming tools segment? 迹象, 比如Flash Live的出现, seem to indicate that it is maintaining Macromedia’s momentum towards live video content. 然而，两家公司都没有这样的工具, such as live graphics and keying or background replacement, that Apple had showcased as part of its new iChat video instant messaging program at the recent Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. 收购Serious Magic, with technologies already geared toward one-take video recording, could easily be leveraged into the live webcasting space.

Acquisition of two other companies could also be beneficial to solidifying Adobe’s place as a leader in video codecs and live webcasting tools. 第一笔收购将是On2. The company continues to innovate with its newer VP7 codec, 在较低的比特率下，哪种方法能提高图像质量, 让VP6看起来像是去年的技术. 真正的, Adobe and several other companies who use the VP6 codec have license extensions that allow them to integrate VP7 into their products, but the popularity of Flash Video makes On2 an easy target for acquisition by one of Adobe’s rivals, since it would give them licensing leverage to make things difficult for Adobe down the line.

The second acquisition Adobe should consider is NewTek, a company that’s rebounded in recent years with its award-winning TriCaster and TriCaster Pro products. The new Pro model not only provides hardware-based studio-in-a-box capabilities, 包括有限的非线性编辑, but it also provides streaming output right out of the box. 在几场音乐会中使用了TriCaster Pro, which were simultaneously recorded to hard disk and streamed to the internet, I can attest that the product provides a price-to-performance ratio second to none. Its main limitation is that, for streaming output, the only choice is Windows Media Video. 带Flash视频, 哪个处理图形和文本比WMV更好, an Adobe-Serious Magic-NewTek combination could be quite compelling.