January 18 2010

Normality will not run in After Effects CS5

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A quick note as I’ve heard this this ques­tion come up a lot lately from peo­ple read­ing my ear­lier post and in dis­cus­sions on var­i­ous forums on the topic of AE CS5 being 64-​​bit only.

Will Nor­mal­ity /​ Atlas /​ Gen­er­a­tor be ported to 64-​​bit for After Effects CS5?

The short answer: No.

Longer answer: Adobe has made the busi­ness deci­sion to deprive me (and all other pro­fes­sional AE users) of a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment by remov­ing sup­port for 32-​​bit plug-​​ins, e.g. all exist­ing third-​​party plug-​​ins, in AE CS5.

Again, this was not done for tech­ni­cal rea­sons, it was purely a busi­ness decision.

Along with my invalu­able col­lec­tion of third-​​party plug-​​ins I also lose the func­tion­al­ity I require to do my daily work. Now I need to go out and find replace­ments for sta­ble and time-​​tested tools and in some cases even develop new ones to replace cus­tom soft­ware I do not own the rights to.

AE’s main strength IMHO was the sheer num­ber of third-​​party plug-​​ins that are not avail­able for other plat­forms. In a way Adobe has lev­eled the play­ing field.

In light of this predica­ment I in turn have also made a busi­ness deci­sion: I’m sim­ply tak­ing my busi­ness else­where.
As I’ll have to replace all my plug-​​ins any­way, this is the per­fect oppor­tu­nity for me to ditch After Effects for a more pow­er­ful solu­tion. One that, iron­i­cally, man­ages to run in both 32– and 64-​​bit. And in Linux!

A word to the After Effects community

I’m not doing this out of spite or to harm the AE com­mu­nity in any way and I apol­o­gize to all users that have come to rely on my plug-​​ins for their daily work.
Updat­ing my soft­ware to run in CS5 means I myself would have to invest in the new ver­sion, and I’m sure you under­stand that’s not some­thing I’m pre­pared to do just to sup­port some free plug-​​ins.

Just like Adobe’s, mine is purely a busi­ness decision.

November 2 2009

A plug-in developer's thoughts on After Effects CS5 being 64-bit only

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Just read a post by Michael Cole­man (prod­uct man­ager for Adobe After Effects) con­firm­ing that Adobe doesn’t intend to make it pos­si­ble to run 32-​​bit plug-​​ins in the upcom­ing AE CS5.
The new soft­ware will be 64-​​bit only and requires all third-​​party plug-​​ins to be upgraded by their respec­tive devel­op­ers to the new architecture.

Note: Michael Cole­man has taken the time to respond to my con­cerns in the com­ments.

That in my opin­ion is a mis­take if I’ve ever seen one.

Don’t get me wrong — I applaud the fact that After Effects is mov­ing to a 64-​​bit archi­tec­ture. It’s with­out doubt the way of the future and the com­peti­tors are already there and have been for a while. Per­son­ally, I’m ready… I’ve been run­ning 64-​​bit oper­at­ing sys­tems exclu­sively for years.
How­ever, Adobe needs to remem­ber what AE’s strengths are: In my opin­ion, and that of many other users, a great part of After Effect’s appeal lies in the vast amount of plug-​​ins on offer — free and com­mer­cial.
If that is changed over night, one of the main rea­sons to choose Adobe’s soft­ware over Nuke or Fusion dis­ap­pears over night as well.

A 64-​​bit com­pos­i­tor with­out the right tools to make use of it isn’t worth much, and let’s face it: Bare After Effects sans third-​​party plug-​​ins doesn’t cut it, 64-​​bit or not.

Now on the Mac side the users may be used to get­ting shafted by plat­form tran­si­tions every other year, but Win­dows users have come to love the lux­ury of being able to run obscure plug-​​ins more than 10 years old in some cases. I know many peo­ple that rely on them for their daily work.

It’s been shown in the past that third-​​party devel­op­ers take their time to upgrade plug-​​ins, if they do at all. The main rea­son being that devel­op­ing upgrades to new archi­tec­tures costs time and money. How­ever, they can’t charge their pay­ing cus­tomers for updates like these with­out gen­er­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant amounts of ill will. Def­i­nitely not a nice sit­u­a­tion to be put in as a devel­oper and one of the rea­sons I don’t sell my soft­ware to the gen­eral pub­lic.
In the case of for-​​hire/​freeware devel­op­ers like myself, there’s no incen­tive to spend the time devel­op­ing an update at all unless I also switch to the new plat­form, which under the described cir­cum­stances I don’t see myself doing.

I think this is some­thing Adobe def­i­nitely needs to reconsider.

There should be a tran­si­tion period where 32-​​bit plug-​​ins are sup­ported seam­lessly along-​​side the (hope­fully soon to be updated) 64-​​bit ver­sions.
It’s tech­ni­cally fea­si­ble: Just look at pro audio soft­ware (Sonar, Reaper, etc.). Those devel­op­ers clearly under­stand the value plug-​​ins have to their cus­tomers and have made the effort to ensure 32-​​bit plug-​​ins will work seam­lessly in their 64-​​bit environments.

If upgrad­ing to CS5 means los­ing (in)valuable plug-​​ins/​waiting ages for updates that may or may not arrive one day, many users are stripped of a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment and might just go ahead and think “Oh well, might as well go with Nuke then if I’m forced to start from scratch any­way”…
I know I’ll be hard pressed not to take this per­fect oppor­tu­nity to ditch After Effects, and I guar­an­tee you I’ll take my home-​​grown plug-​​ins with me wher­ever I hap­pen to end up.

Adden­dum

Just to make it clear: I’m not com­plain­ing as a com­mer­cial plug-​​in devel­oper; I’m com­plain­ing as a user and cus­tomer of After Effects.

Frankly, I couldn’t care less about the extra work it would take to upgrade my own plug-​​ins to 64-​​bit — in fact, it’s prob­a­bly not a big deal in my case and port­ing to Nuke’s OpenFX for­mat would actu­ally be more work.
But I have no vested inter­est in AE devel­op­ment — I don’t make money doing it. I also have no ties to After Effects beyond the finan­cial invest­ment I have made in the soft­ware and third-​​party plug-​​ins. If Adobe’s deci­sion to cut sup­port for 32-​​bit plug-​​ins means I lose that invest­ment, you can be sure I’ll take a good look at the alternatives.

If I choose to switch plat­forms over this deci­sion then so be it. It just means that there will be no 64-​​bit updates to my plug-​​ins for AE… noth­ing is lost for me per­son­ally.
Whether this poses a prob­lem for any­one else out there I don’t know.

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