Gamers behind After Effects and Premiere Pro speed improvements
Related Class

Gamers behind After Effects and Premiere Pro speed improvements

  • Published on
by Chris Smith
Gamers behind After Effects and Premiere Pro speed improvements

If you perform video editing using tools such as Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro, or create effects and animations using After Effects, you have gamers to thank for steady speed improvements over the past several years. We’ve been seeing a steady improvement in the classrooms where teach After Effects courses along with Premiere Pro classes.

Performing video editing and creating special effects requires advanced video processors to enable editors and designers to work efficiently. These video cards help to render images so they can be displayed accurately and quickly on screen.

Video editing is a small field within the design community. There have never been enough video editors and effects designers for computer and technology companies to develop affordable products specifically for this group.  For many years it was common to find video professionals working with highly specialized computer hardware. As computers grew more powerful, video editing on desktop computers became possible, although it often remained slower than desired.

Recently the large audience of gamers has been pushing for more realistic graphics and effects. With millions of gamers willing to pay extra for enhanced video capabilities, technology companies such as Nvidia, Radeon, and Intel have taken notice. Nvidia and Radeon have been creating more powerful video processors that can be used in Mac and Windows computers. Because they are able to mass-produce these systems, they have dropped in price, and are widely available. It turns out that much of the technology that helps improve the video performance of games also helps video editing apps such as Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. Additionally, effects software such as After Effects also benefits from these improved video capabilities.

With high definition and 4K video, the processing required to work effectively with video is growing, but the video processors are improving at a similar rate. Recently Nvidia introduced a highly capable video card known as the GTX 980 Ti which includes 6 GB of dedicated memory just for working with graphics – this is more than is in many new computers. Using these dedicated GPUs, or Graphics Processing Units, improves speed as well as the quality of the final editing and effects being created. The next time you are working on editing videos you can thank a video gamer for helping to push companies to create faster, less expensive video processing cards.

About the author

Christopher Smith is president of American Graphics Institute. He is the co-author of Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies and more than 10 other books on design and digital publishing. He served as publisher and editor of the Digital Classroom book series, which has sold more than one million books on topics relating to InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro and other Creative Cloud apps. At American Graphics Institute, he provides strategic technology consulting to marketing professionals, publishers designers, and large technology companies including Google, Apple, Microsoft, and HP. An expert on web analytics and digital marketing, he also delivers Google Analytics classes along with workshops on digital marketing topics. Christopher did his undergraduate studies the at the University of Minnesota, and then worked for Quark, Inc. prior to joining American Graphics Institute where he has worked for more than 20 years.