It is difficult to judge the value of Adobe Story or On Location against its' cost, since there is no way to define its actual cost. (Story is included free with any Creative Suite and OnLocation is included with Premiere Pro.) But I would say they are a welcome addition to CS5 that most definitely add tremendous value to the Production Premium and Master suites. Adobe's new CS5 offerings are starting to take advantage of the opportunities available such as online libraries and writing in real time with a partner across the world. They have definitely made amazing steps this year to utilize available technologies to the best of their ability.
You can see why I wanted to review Adobe Story with direct references to OnLocation throughout. They work together to help create a seamless transition between the creation of your script and the ingest of footage. Furthermore, these programs continue their journey into Premiere Pro, Flash, and Encore to offer the most searchable content ever imagined. Searchable web video content and Web DVDs have just started to become a possibility, and Adobe is staying ahead of the curve. Imagine being able to search a film to bring up just the scenes with your favorite character, or scenes where an actor says "Let's get out of here!" Audiences of the future are going to get used to being able to access videos from a variety of angles, watch behind the scenes, and search for just their favorite parts to come back to. Not only that, it will continue to help grow product placement and ads in web-based videos, as the commercial information could be metadata within the product on the screen. Distributors will soon start asking you for this metadata information (as I have already learned first hand) and if you don't already have it attached to your content, you will have to t-y-p-e i-t a-l-l o-u-t.
The only drawback at this point with OnLocation is that it currently does not support R3D workflow (or any other direct import other than Firewire). That's such a disappointment, since the new video engine in Premiere Pro allows for real time R3D playback. If they could get that workflow going, OnLocation would become as important a tool to me as gaff tape and blackwrap.
