After Effects to be 64-Bit Native

News broke early last week at Adobe that After Effects CS5 is going to be 64-bit native, or in other words… you won’t be able to run the software on a computer running a 32-bit operating system.  This might be good news for you, and it could potentially be bad news for you as well… either/or, we will cover the details after the jump, and analyze why Adobe has made this move heading into the future.

Even though this is going to mean me having to upgrade my workstation a couple thousand dollars or so, I couldn’t be happier about this decision.  A big aspect that you might not think about, is that all the time that the AE team has been using to develop features for both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, it has slowed them down in fixing, creating and addressing the issues that we want in our favorite software, because they have to develop two versions at a time.  Now, with all the development being centered on a 64-bit native application, there isn’t time wasted on dual versions, and the developers can focus solely on improving our one version that we will be using from now on.

Secondly, RAM.  Yes, the sticks that make After Effects buzz through its renders and RAM previews… now there is no limit, besides that of what your motherboard can take to what you can throw at AE to utilize.  This is fantastic news, because that means longer RAM previews, faster rendering times, more efficient work flows using floating point color (32-bit color, or HDR imagery), and it is going to be way easier to work with HD footage.

Not only does using a 64-bit OS just work better overall, right off the bat you will see a 60% jump in speed and response time.  That is huge.  Pump a total of 8GB OR 16GB RAM in that sucker and you are going to see up to a potential 200% jump in overall speed of the program, not to mention working with footage like 4K RED video will be a breeze.  Did you know that 4K is 35 times the resolution of SD footage?  Try color grading and adding visual effects to a 4K shot on a 32-bit 4GB RAM system… (trust me it’s hard, that’s what I have…)

This is going to really jump start AE users to really take advantage of 64-bit OSes because, well… why not?  CS5 is going to be blazing fast, and your work flow is going to greatly benefit from it.  So here is the deal.  If you bought your computer in the last 4 years, chances are you can run a 64-bit OS on it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can max your RAM to the point that it will make you happy.  I checked my computer out today, and since I bought it back in the day (before Core2Duo processors) my Dual Core Pentium D can run a 64-bit OS, but it actually downgrades the performance, and my motherboard maxes out its RAM at 4GB.  It’s going to be a bit of time before I can grab a new computer, but I will get there slowly but surely, as I am sure you all are going to want to do right about now.

There is no tentative release date for the CS5 software, but with this huge announcement we can only expect that they are going to let more new features, fixes and benchmarks out in the coming months, and hopefully a release date, but until then, I am saving my change to get a new motherboard, RAM and a 64-bit copy of Windows 7.  I got some links for you all to check out to explore more features on this news as well:

Michael Coleman’s Keyframes Blog Post

Adobe’s 64-Bit CS4 White Paper

ProVideoCoalition’s Adobe Blog Coverage

So what are your thoughts on the issue?  Are you going to be upgrading your system? Are you already running 64-bit? Are you going to wait a little while and keep using CS4 or CS3?  Let us know in the comments!

*Also another thing to note, is that Premiere Pro CS5 will also be 64-bit native, and will generally benefit in all the same ways that After Effects will by utilizing the maximum amount of RAM that your system allows.