Keyframes

There's been a lot of excitement and questions surrounding our 64-bit announcement this week, so once again, the After Effects team is opening our phone line for another session of our "fireside chats." The sessions are a way for you to reach out to the After Effects team and tell us what's on your mind, ask us a question, or just say hello. It's an open format, and it's simply some one-on-one time with the After Effects team.

We'll be answering the phone from 4-5 pm Pacific Time, today, October 30th, 2009.

For the complete details and ground rules, please refer to my original fireside chat announcement.

The phone number is +1 (775) AFTERFX, or +1 (775) 238-3739. We look foward to hearing from you!

After Effects has been tested with Windows 7 and there are currently no known issues. Windows 7 looks to be a great OS to run After Effects.

I highly recommend the 64-bit editions for 2 main reasons. First, After Effects CS4 runs better on 64-bit operating systems, and second, After Effects CS4 will be the last 32-bit version of After Effects. I also highly recommend the Professional or Ultimate edition because the Home edition is limited to 8GB of ram.

Adobe has posted an FAQ discussing Creative Suite support for Microsoft Windows 7. For more detailed technical info, see the technote on "Installing and using Windows 7 with Adobe applications."

I've spoken here several times about how running After Effects on a 64-bit OS with plenty of RAM offers the best performance available today. In fact, it's been several years since After Effects and other Adobe video and audio software started supporting 64-bit operating systems. Along the way, it has been an incremental process to take advantage of what the 64-bit computers have to offer.

At the same time, we've seen a huge increase in what you're asking from your software. These days HD is the norm and SD is just a legacy delivery format. And you're not likely to stop there. You are probably wondering how to build efficient workflows with 4K images like those from the Red camera. 4K is 35 times the resolution of SD. Yes, you will need more from your software in order to answer this call.

Today we are announcing that the next version of Adobe After Effects will be a native 64-bit application. This news represents a huge step forward and will provide unprecedented advantages to just about anyone who uses After Effects today. It's going to be a must-have release.

Let's back up a bit because the term "64-bit" is a bit of a tech buzzword. What does 64-bit really mean to After Effects users? In a nutshell, After Effects will be able to take advantage of all the RAM that your operating system allows.

RAM, shmam. Why do you really care about a native 64-bit After Effects?

First, you get the ability to render heavier comps. I'm talking about high resolutions and tons of layers. These are the projects that put the hurt on previous versions of After Effects. If you currently get out-of-memory and errors, this one is for you.

Second, you'll be able to have longer ram previews. Imagine being able to fit a full HD 30-second spot into your RAM preview cache. Your green bars will be much much longer.

Third, you'll be able to work more efficiently with floating point color. Floating point color (aka 32-bit color) requires 4 times the RAM compared to 8-bit color, so working with over-range or HDR imagery will be improved.

Fourth, the green bars you see on the timeline are the visible part of our sophisticated RAM caching technology. With access to larger amounts of RAM, After Effects can store more intermediate renders in its caching system. This means that items re-render or load from disk less often.

It's way too early for rendering speed benchmarks, but I'm thrilled with the possibilities of a 64-bit native After Effects.

So why am I telling you this today?

In order to bring you these advancements, we've had to focus on 64-bit conversion in lieu of continuing to invest in 32-bit support. This means that after 3 versions of supporting both 64- and 32-bit, the next version of After Effects will only support 64-bit operating systems.

Virtually all of Apple's Intel-based Mac systems support 64-bit applications, and Windows users should choose a 64-bit version of Windows to take advantage of the hardware capabilities. You'll probably want to toss some extra RAM in your machine, too. With prices dipping below $25 per GB, it's getting pretty cheap to max out your system RAM.

We realize that new system requirements may require some preparation on your part. We want you to be ready and so we've taken the extraordinary step of announcing this news much earlier than usual.

We're not announcing a ship date yet, and there is more on this subject on Adobe's blog at Pro Video Coalition. We have also posted an official FAQ is available on the Adobe web.

Oh, and by the way, 64-bit native is coming to Premiere Pro, too!

I would love to tell you about the other cool things in the release, but I don't want to ruin all the fun! Besides, you'll just hate me because you can't have it today. :-)

In case you missed it, I invited everyone to give the After Effects team a call last week. We weren't really sure what to expect, but I have to say -- it was a lot of fun. We had time for 8-10 calls, and we enjoyed talking to everyone who took time from their busy day to call us. To all that called, Thanks! And thanks to the AE team who joined me on the phone!

We had a variety of calls. Some had some technical issues, some wanted to give us their feature requests. One person called to say that he just got a great job using After Effects and that he's having fun with it.

Sometimes you just don't get it right. It's true for individuals, but it's also true of large organizations. If you needed support from Adobe recently, you may have been feeling like we failed you. Rightly so. We haven't been doing as well as we should. It wouldn't be visible from the outside, but we've been working behind the scenes to put Adobe on a better path. Today, Adobe would like to formally apologize and promise to do better.

Lambert Walsh, VP, Technical Services speaks for Adobe on this subject: "Adobe is committed to providing the most advanced, innovative products and services in the world. Recently, however, our customers have experienced a level of service that is inconsistent with what they expect and deserve. This is unacceptable and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. We are working diligently to resolve these issues."

The whole letter (PDF, 424 K) can be found on the Adobe support site.