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. :-)
Can we get rid of RAM previews? My RAID disk is fast enough to playback HD uncompressed video. I've got 4TB of super fast disk space but even if I max out my RAM I can only get 32GB. We need some kind of smart caching system like an adjustment layer that will automatically cache everything below it without having to precomp and set file names and compression settings. I want a one click cache system.
This might be my number 1 gripe about after effects.
This is very exciting news as I have been running AE on 64-bit XP since CS3. And it is my prayer nightly for the dreaded "cannot create image buffer" bug to finally be gone when working with large bitmaps and layers in 4k and 8k rez, 32-bit color.
Can't wait to run AE CS5 on 64-bit Windows 7. Let the RAM buying commence.
Let's hope that a 64bit re-write will help with crashes. Honestly, I'd settle for an AE that didn't crash on a regular basis. Really. If the next version of AE had no more features, just crashed 75% less, I'd gladly upgrade.
Or how about a little tick box on each layer that will cache the layer and keep it how it is unless you make a particular change to that layer.
So for instance, if you tick a layer such as a text layer it wont reload it unless it is directly altered. Maybe that wouldn't work, I dont know.
[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. :-)]
i don't hate you, but i mad that you are still talking about RAM cache and green bars.
According to Will Summers post, it's absolutely true AND a joke that Ae needs (and still will nedd) RAM caching for previewing a single video stream without any motion, effects or filters applied.
Thats my RANT No1
Hopefully you guys had some enlightning friday chit-chats with your randomly picked users.
i can't wait seeing long awaited feature request implemented INSTEAD of new features.
I love MY software and i will fight for MY software!
It's about time! CS4 should be have been totally native 64bit, but all we got out of it was a 64bit version of Photoshop.
I would hate to think that Adobe was planning on putting out another 32bit release... that would just be pathetic.
Great news! ETA on CS5?
None of the FAQs or whitepapers make the case for the speed difference
between AE CS3 on Tiger and Leopard, and CS4 on Tiger and Leopard. AE,
from what we've seen, works the same on Tiger and Leopard as long as
you have about 16GBs of RAM on an 8-core system.
If I am wrong, someone please enlighten me.
As others have alluded to, Michael, PLEASE allow for Disk Caching to
optionally replace RAM Caching similar to the good ol' Echo Fire. CPUs
that run 800MHz RAM on Intel Macs, for instance, don't have enough
Memory Bandwidth to sustain HD RAM Previews, but a disk-based solution
does. Moreover, even at 16GBs, RAM is way more finite than hard disk.
With hard disks speeds where they are, this should already be a feature
of After Effects.
Respectfully,
Jeff Bernstein
[ I don't think I've noticed any difference when comparing After Effects performance on Tiger vs. Leopard, either. I wouldn't expect it to be different.
64-bit allows caches to be bigger, not faster. The performance increases will be seen in situations where previously RAM was limited. I'm surprised to hear that you have a system that plays back uncompressed video from disk faster than from RAM. I'd be curious to know which system that is. I have a MacBook Pro that plays back HD ram previews just fine, FWIW. Once we have the full 64-bit architecture in place, we can continue with other improvements like more disk cashing. Can't do it all at the same time. Believe me, I wish we could. -- MC]
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 an all a 32 bit option! Or do you take a cut of all the upgrade costs? :) Also, I have read the comments about just making it more stable and not adding features but Nuke is not just sitting on their thumb and working on being more stable - each release brings new features. You need to be both more stable and add new features. Adobe made a financial killing from us users and it is time for Adobe to start giving back in stability and features.
[The transition to 64-bit is a huge undertaking for us and it has a big payoff. After Effects will be more stable and be a better platform for building great features. I can't talk about it yet, but the next version will also have one of my favorite features in the history of After Effects. So, I think we have your interests at heart. We want the same things.
We would also prefer to keep the 32-bit option, but it was not possible to do keep it while making significant progress on performance, stability and features. Welcome to the tradeoffs and the tough decisions that my job entails. In our situation, I think you'd come to the same conclusion.
I can't speak for individual plug-in developers, but I can tell you that for some it will be relatively easy to convert to 64-bit and for some it will be considerable work. Either way, you are correct -- 32-bit plug-ins will not run in the next version of After Effects. -- MC]
I'll have to agree with most of the people regarding the caching. Will Summers had it right. I nudge a text layer one pixel over, and AE throws fits and re-renders every layer layer and precomp. Now if those precomps have 20+ layers and more precomps inside of those, well... "realtime" is just not feasible in AE. A RAID'd sata configuration can easily handle the previewing.
While I'm at it, "Render in Background" anyone? Since 3.1 you had to render your project and walk away, not allowing to keep working on the 'deadline was yesterday' project.
Seriously? Multi-threaded CPU's, gigs of RAM, Terabytes of harddrives, and we still have to deal with this? C'mon Adobe...get it together.
Mac Pros that utilize 667MHz RAM have issues playing back at full frame rate. This would be for 1920x1080 29.97. The situation is even worse when use a PCI capture card and you are using the QTOC at the same time. Again, the ability of using disk over RAM solves 2 problems. Speaking of RAM Preview, any hope of being able to display fields in the RAM Preview. Make that 3 problems Echo Fire solved.
Not to sound crass, but will 64-bit make the OpenGL support more stable or usable?
Lastly, after going through the hell of the plugin API changes for MacIntel, are we looking at similar hell with this move to 64-bit plug-ins. I don't know if my clients can stomach that awful transition again. In fact, I know I want to throw up right now just thinking about it. 8-)
I'm surprised to hear that you have a system that plays back uncompressed video from disk faster than from RAM. I'd be curious to know which system that is.
???
Which "system" you are talking about?
Operating Systems?
Any Application that is made for playing back (at least) one single HD or SD video stream "WITHOUT" RAM caching is out there, even Open Source apps.
Video RAIDs are not particulary made for huge storage, the're mostly used for speeding up reading huge video data.
Does Premiere caches particulary into RAM after adding filters? No it does not.
Final Cut does not.
Avid does not.
Sony Vegas does not.
... does not.
Separating the Video Stream (to/from disk) form effects (from/to RAM) would make better sense than caching both into RAM.
A "marriage" inbetween Premiere and After Effects wasn't suggested only once.
More and more tasks require editing and little motion graphics in one row, in the same timeline.
Why bother?
aaaaahhh... it's so stupid to conversate this way because it creates so much misunderstandings inbetween both partys (User/Developer).
Only one thing to say in the end and i'll not bother you unless CS5 is installed on my machine ready for testing:
Don't be pissed of my words, rather read them by full.
>> I'm tired of lame comments regarding development. So much open source software already passed my daily work and there were great apps i've never dreamed of, plus that those apps intended being free apps and work like a charm.
there seem to be a great bunch of developer out there who are willed to create world class software, not like Adobe is claiming at any time.
I you really want to get forward, better ask or even hire people who have a real ojective view upon After Effects, you know where you find these guys in the www.
and one thing for the road: if you ever heard about the grand Lloyd Alvarez and it's AeScripts website, i hope that you've donated a HUGE paycheck with an honorable amount of dollars to him and all his contributers.
personally, i don't know if i still kept my job with after effects without all them scripts.
I mean Scripts! Those functions should be NATIVELY part of the After Effects arsenal!?
sigh
Michael, this is kind of off topic, but I was wondering if there was ever going to be an update for After Effects to support Nvidia's GeForce Series 9 graphics cards for Mac OS. I currently have CS3 on a MacBook Pro with an 8 series cards and OpenGL works fine. I was about to upgrade to a new MBP and CS4 but I saw that there is no OpenGL support for series 9 cards in CS4 on the mac. All the current MBP come with the chipset 9400m or the discrete 9600M GT. Am I out of luck for CS4? Should I wait for CS5 or a new graphics card? Thanks.
[We have several of the new laptops here at Adobe and we haven't seen issues with running After Effects CS4 on them. --MC]
Just wanted to say thanks for the news - it's very welcome. Many of the comments here have mentioned fixes in one way or another, and while I understand their frustration and hopes for resolutions or solutions, I'm sure that they welcome the news as well. Hopefully the sour tone doesn't prevent you from sharing in the future...
I greatly appreciate AE and the fact that it has enabled me to earn a living doing something I love. Hopefully you know that for every comment here, there's a thousand (at least - probably many times more!) that appreciate AE as much as I do.
You guys go 64 bit and I'm dropping my subscription with you guys. This is ridiculous to make it a NATIVE 64 bit program as in I have to be running a 64 bit OS.. stupid. And what about all the AE plug ins that only run in 32-bit? Sheesh, you guys are becoming such dummies over there at Adobe.
[You should at least have lunch with me before calling me stupid. You may come to the same conclusion, but at least there would be some reason for it.
I gather that you can't or don't want to use a 64-bit OS. We understand this is an issue for some customers, but we want to help everyone through it as much as we can. We have supported both 32- and 64-bit operating systems for several years now and to get to the next level of performance we need to pull people forward to 64-bit. We announced this transition early to give our customers and plug-in makers plenty of time to move towards a 64-bit OS. The reality is that if you want the advantages that come with being 64-bit (and virtually everyone does), you'll need a 64-bit OS. Also, all of the plug-in makers that I have spoken with are planning to make their products 64-bit capable. If you know of any that aren't, please let me know. -- MC]
CUDA Rendering support?
I tell you what is stupid: it is stupid that there aren't any 32-bit CPU's on the market for years, the cheapest 30$ processors are also 64 bit today. So I don't really understand, why does Microsoft publish a 32-bit version of Windows 7 at all, and why isn't this 32-to-64 bit transition so smooth as 16-to-32 was 14(!) years ago?
There wasn't any 16 bit version of Windows 95. Of course, there were some compatibility issues because of this, but after a few years we didn't have any problems with 32 bit applications. Now years passed after the first 64-bit processors were introduced in 2003 (AMD, Apple) and 2004 (Intel) but 64-bit is still a stepchild of the industry. Can someone tell me, why?
[If Microsoft only made operating systems for After Effects users, I would agree. But they don't. They have their own customers and must address a wide variety of needs. So I can't fault them for it, they just value continuity and legacy support differently than you do. Also, I do not work for Microsoft, so I obviously don't have all the information that they base their decisions on.
In any case, let's make a new rule around here....no calling people stupid, period. Comments are automatically published here, and I don't want to moderate the discussion. I don't have time for it. -- MC]
great news Mr. Michael
we have been waiting for this step . specially after CS4 ..
we really wont to see some more 3d abilities
best regards
The advantages that this change can bring are exciting. A am wondering however how Adobe will address the lack of Apple support for a 64-bit Windows QuickTime. Every studio I work with runs in a QuickTime pipeline. I can't imagine what this change will do to our established PC-MAC workflows.
[Indeed, this presented a challenge for us. But rest assured, QuickTime is critical and After Effects will continue to have the same QuickTime support on Mac OS and Windows. --MC]
i hope you guys gonna fix the render engine as well... or why does ae cs4 render the same project on the same machine 40% slower as cs3?
Hi Michael,
It's great to hear that it's finally official. While I appreciate Adobe catching up with the current trends and needs of its best customers, this mandate seems a little harsh. I think it would at least be reasonable to release at least one version (CS5) in both 32 and 64-bit flavors. Anyhoo, what's done is done, and I'm certainly excited for better performance - hopefully this will solve the nightmares of multi-proc rendering.
My only other request is a real 3D workspace, and not this "faked" 3D environment. It would be soooo nice to have the equivalent of a Flame bicubic in AE. Then again, I'm sure this would open up another giant can of worms, but it's certainly inevitable if you guys want to bite some of the market share associated with Nuke.
Long live After Effects, and thanks in advance for the performance boost :-)
All I just want to press spacebar and play 2K footages from disk in true fps.
for any other missing features that we have solutions with current tools.
thanks.
"Also, all of the plug-in makers that I have spoken with are planning to make their products 64-bit capable. If you know of any that aren't, please let me know. -- MC"
Here's one, and a huge one at that.
http://www.minning.de/journal/my-thoughts-on-after-effects-cs5-being-64-bit-only
You are going to destroy pipe lines based off of third-party plugs and most likely drive customers to other alternatives that are natively capable.
[ We're working with Stefan Minning to make this happen. Hopefully he will accept our offer of help. -- MC ]
Would be nice to pop in a node based architecture, lets say, we could call it "after nodes!" ;) Well, the 64-bit system is going to help, I have been having those memory crashes for years.
Will CS5 debut a Linux version?
It's about time!!
I hope you guys are going to re-write the render engine and not just contend that it will be enough to let people use more RAM to minimize the issues brought forth by the inefficient cache-all non-scanline render engine?
[In fact, 64-bit and access to more RAM is a very good way for After Effects to deal with many of the old inefficiencies. This is why the next version is going to be much better at rendering big things. Beyond that, 64-bit is also fundamental to a whole host of other improvements down the road.
My question for you is why do you want scan-line rendering? Some older, discontinued compositing applications made a big deal of being scan-line renders but eventually abandoned it for other techniques which are better for real world projects.
In any case, if you want big stuff to render better (and I think that's the spirit behind your request), 64-bit does that. -- MC]
I appreciate the move to native 64bit functionality. Short term it'll be painful for some but long term it's the only way to go. 3yrs from now, this decision will such an obvious one. I do hope (like others mentioned) that stability and reliability are at the top of the pile of things to get right.
Thanks for your response.
Yes, I want big, or rather, HUGE stuff to render better. And 64 bit definitely does that.
However, per AE manual the current rendering process is to render every layer into RAM individually and then stacking them from the bottom up to form the final render.
Then say you've got a very large bitmap (tens of thousands of pixels wide) and you want to get the camera up close and pan it around.
Wouldn't scanline renderer only concern itself with the stuff you see on screen without attempting to put the millions of pixels off-screen into memory?
Another example is having HD footage cropped inside a small comp, a couple hundred pixels wide.
Would AE cache (or render) the entire full-HD layer? Surely it doesn't cache layers containing footage that changes from frame to frame, right?
Having AE to cache everything is fine but it should be able to recognize and handle out-of-memory situations better.
cri cri
I'm with Will on this one. What makes plugins like Nucleo so useful is disk cache. Being able to render/store multiple comps to disk makes AE way more efficient.
I'll take this one step further and say that AE needs an edit timeline just like Premiere, where we can set preview codecs and play back from disk. That way AE becomes a much better option for finishing, and I wouldn't have to pull my hair out continually rerendering the same frames.
Sure I want a usable schematic view, a good 3D environment, and all that, but an edit timeline that caches previews to disk would literally save an hour a day.
Now that After Effects and Premiere Pro are going 64-bit native does this mean Apple will finally have to release a 64-bit Quicktime.
I think that the next version of AE will be what WIndows Me was to Microsoft.
First of all, 64bit versions of Windows aren't reasy for anything truly serious unless you are already placed on a pedestal, meaning high end editing in some high profile company. Face it. AE is very popular right now with the home crowd. And they wont migrate away from CS4 unless they are running from some errors. Besides, who needs more than 32bit? High profile computers. There are a lot of short films online created by home users that work in 16bit at the most. They fully realize the severity of working in Float. AE is already inefficient enough. If you do your Googling you find that many problems, like Vegas, run more efficiently. But Vegas doesnt have the capabilities of AE. But other programs do. I personally favor Fusion. But I still fancy AE. But not enough to jack my pc up on steroids just to run a program that spits out bittage that the naked eye cannot see.
Personally I am amazed at the level of plain stupidity and complete ignorance of some of the posts on here.
Regarding bit depth, equipment upgrades, home vs professional users. Why do people think is there any demarcation anymore between home & professional is beyond me. Or may your a fan of hp's/dell's web site, that only lets you buy a great laptop if your a large business, otherwise there is no need, now is there?
Or the people that think x64 is too new... and desperately want to cling to the extremely old an crippled x32 version. Just an FYI Windows x64 Professional has been around so long that its now end-of-life.
Personally I think Adobe should have done this a long time ago. I'm sure most people's problems of crashing etc will go away, it has in many other markets, because users are probably asking far too much from the x32 version of AE.
That said Adobe can still mess this up. How? By not getting plugin developers onboard ASAP.
There will be NO point in UPGRADING if the plugins are only months or years away after the release of CS5.
If they are not getting this done now, CS5 could turn out to be Adobe's biggest failure ever.
We'll see how far 64 Bit(ch) will bring us.
Problems arise:
http://www.minning.de/journal/normality-not-supported-cs5
Well, Adobe has given us the perfect excuse to stop using AE. Removing all those plug-ins that made AE was wonderful tool it is today. I've worked with After Effects since version 6.5, and so far everything that has made the adobe team has been improving the product. However, this commitment to leave no 32bit support is a huge mistake.
Another thing that I criticized the team from Adobe is not developing a system similar to GridIron Nucleo Pro is terribly waiting minutes to see second video (even with 4 cores) especially if you're working in HD with dinamic link. And pay $ 400 for an engine that should be part of the product for which we paid at least $ 999 to me it seems crazy. Furthermore nucleoPro2.0.4 not work as well as it could.
I'm sorry but I will not buy AEcs5, I'll try other options. (And think, I made my company buy After Effects 6.5, 7, Creativesuite CS3 & CS4) Adobe has lost a good customer, and I feel that not just one.
[ I assure you the sky is not falling. Perhaps you did not read this post.
64-bit brings many advantages (including faster dynamic link, as you have requested). We are not removing any plug-ins. Most will be updated and available around the time AE ships or shortly after. After Effects will continue to have a great selection of plug-ins. -- MC]
Under $25 per GB?!??!
Please...show me where.
[ Try Newegg.com. -- MC ]
Can't wait till 64 bit, I got 4 GB of ram but can't use it D:
I want snapping to be improved in CS5 (Timeline snapping)
read the full Article at Dave Navarros Blog here
http://www.themotionexchange.com/profiles/blogs/adobe-ignores-after-effects?xg_source=activity
Adobe is jouking on us?
I work on AE from the 5 version and every version as it own problem. After effect is the most unstable software that I ever met. It crush and full of error while you rendering and while you working. Adobe need to do a really big bug fix to there product before they get with new relese.
CS4 has all the tool that we need, but it have alot of problem and bugs. Adobe need to fix the engine of the software, the render option and the bugs with the plugins. The problem with adobe is that they start to manag like microsoft. every year they have new relese of software, but new softwares with tons of bugs.