It's official: 64bit is the future for Premiere Pro and After Effects

There is the question as to why is Adobe announcing this now, so far in advance of anything? The answer is you my friends. We want to make sure that you're aware of where we're going and that if you have any thoughts about upgrading in the future, that you have the necessary time to get ready for it. In addition, if you're using CS4 and not using 64-bit now, you should run not walk to the store to upgrade your OS and memory. The benefits of '64-bit aware' CS4 are awesome right now. I have talked about it previously here and here.

CS 'Next' and true 64-bit is the next logical step and will provide users with optimized code, greater stability and more performance. Video editing or motion content creation has always demanded the most from any computer and we believe that this won't change any time soon. Therefore the move to 64-bit is a necessary step towards the future to ensure that Adobe can continue to bring exciting tools and features to our customers.

Why no 32-bit version? There's a good answer for that one as well. The bottom line is that it's a different program than a 64-bit version. Two versions = two types of code. Twice the engineering, twice the checking, twice everything. You say, "Yeah, so what?" Well, Adobe may be a large software company, but they do not have infinite resources. We're constantly doing a balancing act - trying to get as many cool things we can with a certain number of resources. I think we've done a pretty good job in the past. Our assessment was that it was better to make one awesome 64-bit version of Premiere Pro and After Effects than to make two versions that were so-so.

What about all of the other products in the CS 'next' suite (whatever they may be)? Will they be 64-bit as well? The answer on this one is mostly no. As you know Photoshop CS4 on the Windows side is already 64-bit native, so that won't be a problem. The rest of the suite will remain 32-bit for the time being, but a move to 64-bit is probably eventual. Getting performance out of the two main video centric apps (Premiere Pro and After Effects) was essential and so it was done.

This decision has been a long time coming. It goes back about a year! This should give you an idea of a) how far we're thinking in the future and b) how much we're thinking about the customer!

One final tidbit on the whole 64-bit only decision. Originally, I passionately objected that dropping 32-bit versions would hobble a large bulk of our users. I admitted that this was a necessary step and that it was a limited problem since the world would eventually move to 64-bit anyway, but it wasn't the right time I argued. Over the ensuing months, in talking to customers and in promoting the fact that CS4 loved 64-bits anyway I saw that most of our customers have already moved to 64-bit operating systems.

Today I find myself excited about the break from 32-bit and know that our customers have either moved or will move to 64-bit. Snow Leopard is solidly if not entirely 64-bit and Windows 7 looks to be a real winner with the Windows crowd, so it's a great time to start preparing.

Where you can get more information

• A post on ProVideo Coalition
• On the Production Premium Product page (You'll have to look - there's a lot of information there!)
• And the FAQ

There are lots of FAQs on each of the product pages as well, but the above will hopefully get you started.