Adobe Inc. wants to help video creators be more creative after acquiring video review and collaboration platform provider Frame.io Inc., for a reported $1.275 billion in cash.

Frame.io, whose acquisition was announced today, will add more capabilities to Adobe’s Creative Cloud, which accounts for the bulk of the company’s revenue.

Founded in 2014 by post-production specialist Emery Wells and technologist John Traver, Frame.io’s software is designed to solve workflow challenges for filmmakers. It comes with an array of tools for creative professionals to streamline the video creation process, helping to centralize key assets such as scripts, storyboards, dailies, work-in-progress and so on. It also enables collaboration, with creatives able to leave feedback, comments and make annotations on individual frames.

Frame.io also touts its fast upload speeds to cloud hosting services such as Box Inc., Dropbox Inc. and Vimeo Inc. The platform is said to have more than 1 million users.

Adobe Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky, who is also executive vice president of Adobe’s Creative Cloud unit, told Bloomberg that his company decided to buy Frame.io after learning that thousands of its own customers were using the tool alongside its products. It plans to incorporate Frame.io’s tools into its own to make it easier for creative teams to edit videos together.

Belsky said Adobe first considered building its own tools to do this, but ultimately figured it was better to buy Frame.io instead.

It looks to be a smart acquisition by Adobe, as the explosion in video on social media from millions of influencers has led to huge demand for tools that make it easier to edit clips in real time. These days, virtually everyone who cares about a social media presence wants to produce highly polished videos.

Belsky told Bloomberg that his company has seen demand from small businesses, schools and large companies that all want to create more video.

Frame.io will be integrated with Adobe’s Premiere Pro and After Effects video editing applications. “We plan to deeply integrate Frame.io into Premiere Pro, our industry-leading video editing application,” Belsky said in a blog post announcing the acquisition. “Longer term, we have ambitious plans to bring advanced collaboration and groundbreaking technology, including expanded use of artificial intelligence, to video production and make every creator and creative team more collaborative and productive.”

“Video has become the way for brands to communicate, both externally and internally, raising the stakes for video quality,” said Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research Inc. He explained that for video to become a part of an enterprise’s acceleration strategy, it needs to be in the cloud too, as that is the final delivery platform.

“Frame.io brings both cloud and workflow-based productivity to Adobe, so it will be interesting to see how the company will integrate its capabilities for faster, richer and ultimately more successful video creation,” Mueller added.

Analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy told SiliconANGLE the acquisition makes a lot of sense for Adobe as a big number of its creative customers already use the Frame.io platform. “The price seems rich, but in today’s world of exuberance and ‘free money,’ the fundamentals matter far less,” he said.

Adobe said the deal is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions, and is expected to close during the fourth quarter. Once the deal is done, Wells and Traver will join Adobe and continue to lead Frame.io’s team, reporting directly to Belsky.

Image: Adobe