Kasper JadeExclusive: Adobe Systems Inc. plans to introduce a major update to its After Effects motion graphics and visual effects production software in the spring of 2007, according to a company roadmap viewed by AppleInsider.
Though many of the software's specific feature enhancements remain shrouded in secrecy, it's expected to deliver additional user interface and OpenGL improvements when it makes its debut as After Effects 8.0 towards the end of June.
For Adobe, the release will mark the second major update to After Effects in less than 18 months.
This past January, the San Jose, Calif.-based software developer released a feature-packed update in Adobe After Effects 7.0. That version introduced a re-designed, unified user interface, accelerated high-fidelity OpenGL 2.0 support, and a comprehensive set of Flash Video (FLV) export capabilities.
Licenses for the professional version of After Effects currently cost $1000, while the standard version fetches $700.
In related news, AppleInsider reported this past weekend that Adobe also holds plans to deliver an early public beta of its highly anticipated Creative Suite 3.0 software bundle for both the Mac and Windows later this month.
The beta release, which will pack developmental versions of popular Adobe applications like Photoshop and Illustrator, will be available as a download to current license holders of Creative Suite 2.0 as early as this week, sources have said.
On Thursday Adobe will hold a conference call with analysts and members of the media to discuss financial results from its fiscal fourth-quarter of 2006. Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call estimate the company will earn 33 cents a share on revenues of $670 million, up form 30 cents and $510 million during the year-ago quarter.
Andrew Orr
Marko Zivkovic
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
12 Comments
how about they ( Adobe ) release 7.0 Mac version that is not crippled compared to Windows version ? No OpenGL support for shadows and motion blur on Mac .....
8.0 better have some Motion like OpenGL acceleration ..... some simple scenes are 10 times faster in Motion than in AE7.0
I love Meatloaf.
...reminds me... gotta get me some Adobe stock...
(edit: Think I'll wait for it to drop to a more reasonable 25 or 30 before buying)
Ok so I use after effects to some extent and what they really need to do (in my non-programmer) opinion is figure out a way to leverage all the power in the Mac Pros and machines with more than just 2 cores. With it being a UB obviously, they need to find a way to multi-thread it for 4 or 8 cores and plan way ahead since by the time they get around to updating it again, there will be plenty machines out with 4, 8 or maybe even more cores. With that program it should be able to use every morsel of power those computers can pump out. There is no reason why a computer as powerful as a Mac Pro 3.0 Xeon, with 2gigs of ram and an X1900 512MB Ati card should be rendering frames the same speed roughly as my 15" 1.67 G4 powerbook (even though its going through rosetta).
I'm planning on upgrading majorly here in a few months and this article is really good news, i just hope adobe rises to the occasion and really makes AE shine. I went into a local store to test how fast the current AE (7.0) runs on these xeon chips, and i was greatly underwhelmed. And when i opened the activity monitor it was only using about 127% of overall processing power (out of 400%, since its 100percent per core) . I understand theres alot of translation happening during rendering thru rosetta, but i also understand how fast these mac pros are.
I just hope software companies (namely adobe) will take into much consideration, hardware of the future. Write programs that address more ram, processors etc than are feasable today, so that 2 years later you softwre will still be on the up and up.
either that or i hope apple figures out some way of doing OS-level anti-hyperthreading so that the 4, 8 or however many cores a computer has can be made into one or 2 outrageously fast cores...... this way, no matter how far these developers are behind, if you spend over 3 grand on a machine to be a powerhouse, when you take it hope and crank it up, its a real powerhouse!
public beta anytime soon?
Glad to hear Adobe is well into development of version 8. I was really disappointed when I realized version 7 was PPC only. Good news.
How come we didn't get a 7.5 this time around? There were some good improvements between 6.0- 6.5, and 7.0 has some serious bugs in it. Ever tried hiding the app - it freezes and you gotta force quit, no chance of saving what you've done either. The 3D engine is still inconsistent within nested comps, and masks mess up if they're more than one or two comps down (and forget using them with 3D).