The Future Of After Effects?

Recently, i’ve seen a piece of interesting news from Michael Coleman’s blog that i think has got many people excited.

“Today we are announcing that the next version of Adobe After Effects will be a native 64-bit application.”

yes, its true, meaning the next version of After Effects CS5 will only run on 64-bit system. And so firstly:

What is 64-bit and what is the difference?

It might be confusing at first but the main difference is the increased address space to address more memory. Today’s 32-bit intel and AMD chips can address up to 4GB of ram. In Windows-based machines, that 4GB is split between the operating system and the applications. That means the most memory any given application(eg, after effects) can access is 2GB.

A 64-bit processor, on the other hand, can address up to 16 exabytes of memory (that’s over 16 billion gigabytes)

And so… How does it concern me?

With 64-bit, you will be able to take advantage of all those ram. Meaning

• After Effects CS5 will be blazing fast.
• The ability to render layers of high resolution comps without running out of memory and errors. (yay!)
• Longer Ram Preview.
• The ability to run all the apps(eg. After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator) at the same time without slowing down.
• The capacity to handle any resolution your clients request as more and more productions are shooting high-resolution RAW content.
• Lots and lots of new possibilities.

How do i upgrade to a 64-bit system?

I won’t go into the details but the majority of CPUs built in the last three years can run 64-bit systems. Mostly likely, a memory upgrade is all that is needed to realize the benefits of 64-bit.

You can read more on the details at:

Michael Coleman: The future of After Effects is 64-bit native
Studio Daily: 64-bit question
Inside the Hive: After Effects to be 64-Bit Native
Stefan Minning: A plug-in developer’s thought