AE CS4 64bit

[Remy Mainz]

It looks like CS5 will work with 64bit and more cores properly. 64bit CS4 was a 32bit hack job.

https://cs5.org/?p=669#more-669

“Dealing with files is faster. Reading and writing certain compressed file formats is twice as fast. We have also parallelized QuickTime export. This improves the performance of common tasks like transcoding files into other formats.

Rendering is faster. In the simple cases, when rendering on a single core, we are seeing 20-40% shorter render times. This is a result of general efficiencies gained during the 64-bit conversion. As a result, each core on your system is being used more efficiently and you can expect to see greater utilization for each CPU core.”

For multi-core CPUs the After Effects CS5 has an option “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously”. This feature has also been considerably improved. The CS5 developers have completely rewritten the After Effects multi-core processing engine. As a result render time showed by CS5 during benchmark tests is by 30-50% shorter. That’s a really impressive result, but not the only one with regard to multi-core processing.

Another improvement is that starting up multi-core processing in CS5 takes 1-2 seconds compared to about 30 seconds in CS4. So using multi-core processing became more convenient even for short renders.

Thus CS5 ensures more effective use of CPU cores and makes multi-core processing more comfortable and efficient.

Now, good news for those who have in their disposition Core i7 hyper-threaded processors with virtual cores. Unlike After Effects CS4 which could not use virtual cores, CS5 can see and use them so you will be able to enjoy all the advantages of the latest multi-core systems.

Also Michael Coleman announced several more individual improvements. He assures that some effects are faster: Bilateral blur, Turbulent Noise, and the ever-handy Cartoon effect. Pixel Bender plug-ins will also render faster.

“Even though we recommend adding some more RAM to your machine to take advantage of After Effects CS5, it will still work better in computers with less than 4GB of RAM. Even in this situation, After Effects CS5 can still use more RAM than CS4, and this means fewer out-of-memory errors and better performance.”

There is one more problem resolved by Adobe. When many applications are used simultaneously there is usually a kind of a struggle between them for the amount of RAM which they can use. Michael Coleman said that the developers added a new performance optimization that allows Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore, and Adobe Media Encoder intelligently coordinate their memory usage. This new feature should ensure the possibility to enjoy smooth and comfortable work.

So, to summarize it should be said that Adobe CS5 looks very attractive and no wander that so many look forward to trying it.