Adobe After Effects CS5 Review

After Effects CS5's biggest new feature is that it runs as a 64-bit native application, finally taking advantage of all your CPU cores and RAM, for dramatically improved rendering speed.

Earlier this year, Adobe released a new update to After Effects with a great round of new features and additions. Probably the most notable change is that this new version of the software operates as a native 64-bit application. When I purchased my 8-core Apple Mac Pro, I added 20GB of memory, but honestly the option to use all of that memory has been limited until the new 64-bit architecture of Snow Leopard. In addition, there have been few creative programs that have taken advantage of the memory until recently. CS5 finally gets it right and allows you not only to use all your RAM and CPU cycles but also to selectively decide how you use it.

If you work in SD, HD, 4K, and beyond, you can now adjust AE to get the maximum juice out of your PC or Mac workhorse. 32-bit systems previously limited the amount of available RAM to about 3GB or 4GB max (remember when that seemed like a huge amount?) but now under After Effects' preferences, you can allocate as much or as little memory as you want. Using all your RAM speeds up rendering dramatically but you can also set up how your processors are used. For example, if you had six cores, you could reserve two cores for other applications and have AE use four. AE even lets you allocate virtual cores when you are on a system that supports hyper-threading. If you purchase the Adobe CS5 Production Premium package, these memory settings are connected through Premiere Pro, Encore, and Adobe Media Encoder as well, so you can set RAM and CPU allocation on one program and have the resources available in all your CS5 production software.

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Also new is expanded support for AVC-Intra and Red formats. The new memory settings allow easily working with 2K to 4K Red R3D files and the files come in natively with no need for rewrapping or transcoding. Likewise, bringing in AVC-Intra 50 and AVC-Intra 100 files is smooth and easy, offering full native support of one of Panasonic's highest-quality broadcast formats. A new autokeyframe mode has been added to CS5, and I am surprised this has not appeared sooner. It is a master toggle that turns on autokeyframing for the camera, position, shape manipulation, masks, effect points, and rotation. Before this upgrade, you have to manually turn on keyframing on a parameter and layer basis by clicking the stop watch icon. While this granular layer of control is part of why After Effects shines, the drilling down can be tedious for those just wanting to work animating visually by moving objects around with the mouse. Autokeyframe mode captures all your keyframes at once so you can spend more time experimenting and less time twirling down parameters. Seasoned pros will no doubt stick to the old methods of individual layer keyframing, but this does offer a good starting point for new users and those who want to work more visually than precisely. The Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse 3 LE plug-in has been updated to offer more advanced color grading options such as highlight recovery, vibrance controls, auto color and exposure as well as a more simplified user interface. Digieffects is now represented in CS5 via the now included FreeForm plug-in. The plug-in offers a huge array of 3D design options and lets you construct items such as billowing fabrics, flags, animating video panels, and much more. It works in sync with AE's own 3D cameras and lights for dramatic 3D object animations.

Rotobrush is a new CS5 tool that can potentially save media artists thousands of hours once spent on painstaking rotoscoping work. The method could not be simpler: Instead of creating vector outlines pixel by pixel around an object to be matted, you merely paint a few simple strokes onto the object. The tool them does a great (and accurate) job of automatically generating your matte—perfect for things like pulling a person out from a background. You can tweak the edge if needed by feathering and choking, but the amazing part is the tool then uses this information to do the frames after it. If your shop does a lot of rotoscoping, this new addition to After Effects will pay for itself probably by the end of the first day of purchase.

There are many more new tweaks and new features (including a new version of Imagineer Systems' motion tracking tool mocha for After Effects), and it is hard not to see this new version of AE as a must buy. Ultimately aside from the basket of new features we've come to expect in CS updates, the fact that the program now runs as a native 64-bit application and can take advantage of all your available CPUs and RAM, is reason enough. We all know that time is money, and those artists with current generation machines (and those eyeing a PC/Mac upgrade) will see dramatically faster rendering and production results, making After Effects CS5 well worth the asking price.