Adobe’s new AI-based plugin frames videos for every screen

Adobe’s new AI-based plugin frames videos for every screen

New York, 17.9.2019

Adapting video to different screens has been a challenge since films made for wide screens were first shown on square televisions. With the addition of devices such as tablets and smartphones, Adobe has developed an AI-based plugin that can automatically prepare a video for each screen while ensuring that the most important parts are always in the picture.

Auto Reframe, as Adobe called the new tool, will be available for Premiere, the company’s video editing application, sometime this year, taking advantage of cloud-based AI and machine learning automation software Adobe Sensei. Auto Reframe will be an easy-to-use plugin, promises Adobe. Users can easily add it to their machining schedules. It analyzes the footage and then creates multiple versions in 16:9 widescreen, 1:1 square, and 9:16 vertical ratios, so the end result can be played back on almost any device.

To ensure that the video’s subject remains in the image, the plugin also shrinks and positions all titles created in Adobe Premiere to integrate them into the different dimensions. However, no software tool is infallible, so if Auto Reframe’s automatic pan and scan settings do not deliver results that users are satisfied with, manual adjustments and optimizations can be made.

For professionals who produce content that could land online or be delivered to millions, Auto Reframe sounds like it’s helping to ease at least a few headaches during post-production. But it’s also a tool that any smartphone should include by default when friends and family send you a video that you’ve annoyingly filmed in portrait format, and you’d rather enjoy it in widescreen format without suffering from huge black bars that appear on both sides of your screen. Conversely, if the vertical video phenomenon continues its march to prominence, we could see how this tool is used for evil.