2. 64-bit Memory
After Effects has always been a RAM intensive application, and one of its biggest limitations has been its 32-bit nature... until now. Regardless of how much RAM you have in your system (apart from multiprocessor rendering) AE has only been able to address a maximum of 3GB at any one time. On the Mac especially, this meant shorter RAM previews and frequent "Out of Memory" errors--frustrating to say the least. But now, since CS5 has been rewritten as a 64bit application, AE can now use every last drop of RAM in your system, all at once. This translates immediately into longer (and faster) RAM previews, even at full resolution HD. The way After Effects caches renders in your comp has been revised too, so less time is spent re-rendering certain tweaks and changes to a layer as you work. If you look at the “Memory & Multiprocessing” settings in After Effects, you’ll also notice that the memory settings are now also shared with Premiere Pro, Encore and the Adobe Media Encoder as well as After Effects. This feature is particularly nice when you are bouncing between applications and utilizing the fully integrated features of CS5. Now you can get much more of an idea as to just exactly how much RAM is being shared when you have all of these different applications open at once.