Today we took a major leap forward in our future development of Premiere Pro and AfterEffects. We announced that we would no longer support 32 bit OSes in future releases of Premiere Pro and After Effects. As many of you know, we are not new to the 64 bit arena, Photoshop CS4 is already native 64 bit on Windows and we have been running the last 3 versions of Premiere Pro and After Effects on 64 bit OSes.

Both Premiere Pro CS4 and AfterEffects CS4 already give you one of the best parts of 64 bit and that's better memory addressing. Both Premiere Pro and After Effects CS4 have been optimized and architected for 64 bit and perform much better today than running XP32 or Vista32 or even the new Win7 32. You can look forward to seeing at least 50% better performance when running a 64 bit OS.Some people are even quoting 200% better performance!

For PremierePro"Next", we are moving to new GPU + CPU model which allows us to scale and divide the workload more efficiently between multiple CPU Cores and GPU Cores. It uses the new nVidia CUDA technology and is designed to work with nVidia cards such as the Geforce 285 and FX4800/5800 series.

Why mention this now ?

We want to give our users plenty of time to upgrade their systems to 64 bit and to get ready for the changes that are quickly coming. Both Apple and Microsoft have released 2 excellent 64 bit OSes in 2009. Mac users already know how great the Mac OS is and Windows users can look forward to seeing Windows7 64 in action.They can also finally look forward to using all of that RAM they purchased.

Anyone looking to buy new hardware might want to know what the requirements will be to run CS"Next" and how make great use of their CS4 investment today. I am recommending Multiple Cores, 8GB RAM or more, one of the nVidia cards mentioned above, and either Win7 64 or OSX 10.6. Again, CS4 runs excellent on this config as well.

The big change will come with true 64 bit performance built for a 64 bit OS like Windows7 64 and OSX Snow Leopard 10.6. Once you drop the legacy support for 32 bit operations you open the gates for better performance and a better over all experience.

When ?

The 64 bit versions are still many many months away - but we need you thinking about your "next" step.This was a tough decision but a necessary one. We are hard at work in the labs on this new 64 bit project. Much of the major 64 bit work is already done for Premiere and After Effects and we are beginning to see the benefits of our work. The early performance tests are truly amazing.

Do yourself a favor and take that major leap forward and upgrade to 64 bit now.

Look for a new video featuring Premiere Pro the 4.2 update. I'll be posting a new article and video link here in the next few weeks. Support for AVC-Intra import, FCP 7 Import, and more...

Here's more information on 64 bit from our website:
Whitepaper: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/pdfs/cs4_production_premium_64bit_wp.pdf
FAQ: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/faq/