October 20, 2009

CS5 After Effects & Premiere: 64-bit only

In a post at ProVideoCoalition, Simon Hayhurst, Adobe's Sr. Director of Product Management for Dynamic Media, confirmed that After Effects & Premiere will be 64-bit only in CS5. See The Future is 64-bit at PVC [note: Autodesk discreet smoke is 64-bit already] and the FAQ at the CS4 Production Premium page. From the FAQ:

"Adobe continues to prioritize 64-bit support based on the potential user benefits and the complexity of the code transition. At this time, After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro are the only products that we are announcing will be 64-bit only in the next major release."

There's a bit more on this from AE Product Manager Michael Coleman in The future of After Effects is 64-bit native. At this point 64-bit might be a problem only for some people on Windows, but there's plenty of time to upgrade before CS5 (next Spring, assuming the usual release cycle).

Well, that's not quite right, since all your old plug-ins -- on Mac and Windows -- have to be 64-bit too, unless there's some emulation. As Frank Wylie remarked on the AE-List , "Looks like some late nights for the after market plug in folks!"

Update: Dav's Techtable there's more on PremierePro in It's Official: The future of Adobe video is 64 bit

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

When you say 64 bit only that means there is no 32 bit? Will I have to boot my mac into 64 bit to use it and then boot back into 32 bit to use other apps? Will I have to buy another round of plug in updates again? (Mac os 9 to Mac os 10 ppc to Mac os 10 intel and now Mac os 10 intel 64 bit???) If that is the case, they need to reconsider and all a 32 bit option!

Rich said...

There is no 32-bit version, but you won't have to boot into any special version of OS X.

You will have to contact plug-in vendors for new versions. They probably won't charge much, if anything, unless they add features.

Rich said...

Oh, you should comment at AE Product Manager Michael Coleman's blog for a better hearing. Anything I say is really just quasi-educated guesses!

On the plus side, Mac users now have Windows users to share the pain, but over all it'll move everyone into a more stable future.

It's a good time to upgrade everything if you can spare the money to invest in saving time. Still, your present setup should be able to produce media at the current level for many years to come.

You might make an early inquiry to your plug-ins vendors with your concerns. Since anyone who knows something for sure is under NDA, we won't really know about plug-ins for sure until Adobe tells us!

We all have to deal with full HD video sooner or later though. Check out this demo from IBC:
http://aeportal.blogspot.com/2009/09/adobe-demos-nvidia-cuda-acceleration.html

Anonymous said...

I own Production Premium CS4 and I want to know if Adobe plans to put in more than 12 transitions in its next release, or include real-time monitoring during tape capture OR batch processing of files or QT export etc etc etc. Or if they p[lan to fix the crashing nightmare of Encore (dvd encoder). After Effects and Pshop are cool, but trust me, for video stay away from Adobe on the mac. FCP is def the better game in town for mac.

Rich said...

I did know that there was NOT quite feature parity yet between the Mac and Windows versions of Premiere, but not export QuickTime? CS4 brought better QT integration to Windows, so that would be surprising. And I wouldn't miss the transitions myself. I agree that Encore has been problematic at times, esp crashing on certain fonts, and found once you get an error it's best not to save or else may as well just rebuild from scratch. That takes less time than you think since you already made all the decisions.

I'm behind on the Mac now but agree that FCS makes more sense, esp if you don't need both Photoshop and After Effects (about the same price as Production Premium).

Anyway if I did know what was going on with Adobe video plans on the Mac, I couldn't say. It'll probably be at least 3 weeks until we get reviews for CS5.