After Effects CS5 compatible 64-Bit plug-ins + left behind

As After Effects CS5 is near release, you can find lists of After Effects CS5 compatible 64-Bit plug-ins here:

• After Effects CS5 Plugin Update guide
• Toolfarm system 64-Bit Plug-ins

It's a bit sad that AEFlame (Open Source; Andrew Davidson and Flam3) and several others will be left below! The actual facts of any development are unknown here, but see Normality will not support After Effects CS5 for background on one case.

Update: Red Giant posted a video on Upgrading Your Plug-ins to CS5/64-bit Compatibility.

Native 64-bit After Effects plug-ins

Michael Coleman, Product Manager for After Effects, addresses a few questions and concerns in his post, Native 64-bit After Effects plug-ins:

"If there's one thing I want you to know, it's that the After Effects team is 100% committed to working with our customers and our 3rd party developers to make this transition as fast and easy as possible.

We're taking extra steps and working more closely than ever with our 3rd party developers:

First, our SDK is available much earlier than ever before. Normally we make this available when we ship. This time, the 64-bit After Effects SDK is ready and available now. Any developer who wishes to join our pre-release program can have access.

Second, updating plug-ins can be easy or hard, depending on the plug-in. We've updated all of our own plug-ins and we've provided support for every plug-in that is included in the box with After Effects. After Effects engineers are available to answer questions and assist our developer community. It's our goal to make this as easy as possible.

Third, quality counts. We can put developers in contact with customers who are able to test the new versions. We can also facilitate this process using Adobe resources.

Fourth, watch this blog and my twitter feed (@motiongfx) for the latest information about availability of 3rd party plug-ins. If you have news about plug-ins, let me know and I can pass it on to the community.

If you're a developer, please reach out to me and let me know how we can help.

If you're an After Effects user, tell your favorite plug-in makers that you're interested in having a 64-bit compatible version. Also reach out to me to tell me which plug-ins are important to you. I can follow up with help for the developers."

Normality will not support After Effects CS5

Stephan Minning announces that his AE filter Normality will not support After Effects CS5. It looks like his other filters may also reach end-of-life with CS5.

For background see A plug-in developer's thoughts on AE CS5 64-bit.

Update: the comments on Minning's latest post were lively, but there wasn't a cogent explanation on why "a simple software bridge" was too difficult. Perhaps support would cause too many problems.

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

Talking points on 64-bit performance

The advocacy for 64-bit OS installs continues with a new Adobe white paper on 64-bit Performance. Todd Kopriva notes the paper and adds this and more for AE users:

"The trick to making maximum use of the RAM in your computer with After Effects is to set the Memory & Multiprocessing preferences, including Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously."

Paying $300 just for a 64-bit OS doesn't make that much sense, but investing in a new machine might, even if CS5 is nowhere in sight. A Gateway quad-core with Vista 64-bit, 8 GB RAM, an nVideo GT120 with 1GB, and an HDTV tuner with Media Center DVR is less than $800 at stores (recently $900 with 22" screen). That's half the price for just the same CPU performance as a new iMac according to GeekBench scores. Those prices should come down further as the Intel Core i7 and DDR3 memory take over on both platforms, along with the release of both Apple Snow Leopard and Windows 7 this year. In any case newer hardware and software platforms should be reasonably stable by the time CS5 ships.

More info on 64-bit performance and Production Premium can be found in previous posts.

Also, the SF Cutters' 9th Anniversary meeting March 17th is featuring a talk by Adobe Systems' Simon Hayhurst & Karl Soule on "64-bit optimization in Adobe CS4."

SF Cutters 9th Anniversary March 17th (free)

The SF Cutters 9th Anniversary Meeting is on March 17th at Adobe in San Francisco. RSVP is required; seating is limited so this event will sell out. Full details and registration can be found here. Doors open at 6:30; arrive early for refreshments. Presentations include:

Kim Salyer & Video Arts team: Beijing Olympics Adidas Spiral Theatre, Coca Cola Pavilion

Blackmagic Design: "How Blackmagic Design makes the vital connections - a basic 101 - what cards and devices to use, what different workflows require."

Frank Colin of Equilibrium Sneak Preview: "New Service for Monetizing Content on Any Website"

Adobe Systems' Simon Hayhurst & Karl Soule: "64-bit optimization in Adobe CS4." CS4 Production Premium has been partially re-architected for 64-bit operating systems to use large memory more effectively (up to 20GB of memory for Premiere Pro alone, up to 64GB of memory for a large Production Premium workflow). Benefits include:

• Faster editing performance in Premiere Pro, especially when working with high resolution files.
• Better multi-core rendering and longer RAM previews in After Effects.
• Run multiple Production Premium components simultaneously, and leverage new integration like Dynamic Link to move content between them.
• Projects can scale further in resolution and complexity, taking advantage of the additional available memory.

Raffle prizes for the event (you must be present) include a copy of Production Premium donated by Adobe.

Think 64-bit

Adobe seems to be advocating for 64-bit OS installs, and watching to see if there's any push back. Michael Coleman is asking for comments on what’s holding people back from 64-bit in his PVC post, in addition to explaining the performance benefits already built into CS4 Production Premium.

Windows users seem to be the ones lagging behind since the big cutoff for the Mac was Intel-only CS4 (OS X 10.5 is about a year and a half old). After Effects plug-ins could be an issue for some people. While rumor is that 64-bit XP works nicely, only Vista is supported by Adobe and by 3rd party hardware solutions like AJA. Based on a small sample of past releases, CS5 could be another year away so there's no rush. If you're looking in retails stores, the 64-bit Windows boxes are the ones with 4+ GB of RAM (except the next-gen Intel Core i7) -- and there are some not expensive portables with DDR3 RAM or 1GB nVidia graphics.

Update: Jan Ozer did some tests comparing 32- and 64-bit OS performance for EventDV a few months ago:
"After correcting for the 18% difference in processor speed, the 64-bit system was 67% faster on my standard DV test file, up to 63% faster on HDV-related tests, up to 50% faster on AVCHD tests, and up to 227% faster on tests using footage from the RED camera. The only format that didn’t seem to improve on the 64-bit system was DVCPRO HD, which showed only a 13% speed boost."

64 bit computing and Premiere Pro CS4 4.0.1

The Genesis Project notes An article on 64 bit computing and Production Premium by Jan Ozer. In this 1st part of a series on the topic, Ozer says:

"I had two eight-core systems: the Windows workstation, a 2.83GHz HP xw6600 running Windows XP (32-bit version) with 3GB of RAM, and a 3.2GHz Mac running OS X version 10.5.5 with 8GB of RAM. Rendering out to Blu-ray compatible MPEG-2 took 68 minutes on the Windows workstation, 11 minutes on the Mac. ...

Faster performance and responsiveness, with full support for 64-bit computing platforms to accelerate compute-intensive postproduction tasks. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 version 4.0.1 is architected to take advantage of the additional memory available in 64-bit systems."

Ozer also gives some background and includes a Q&A with Giles Baker, Adobe's Group Product Manager for Editing Workflows.