64 bit encoding

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/affordablehd/newsletter/cs4_64bit_1208/index.html?imw=Y

The author of the above article found that CS4 on 64 bit machines - Windows and Apple (since they can work with a larger RAM) outperformed CS4 on a 32 bit Windows machine significantly in terms of speed when CS4 was used to convert AVHCD.

AVCHD (Audio and Video Compression for High Definition) is a high-definition and standard-definition recording format for use in digital tapeless camcorders.

32 bit Windows (eight core, 2.83GHz HP xw6600, 3GB RAM) - 68 mins
64 bit Apple OS X 10.5.5 (3.2GHz, 8GB RAM) - 11 mins
64 bit Windows (eigt 3.33GHz cores, HP xw8600, 16GB RAM)- 8.5 mins

In fact, Adobe recommends (from Adobe's reply to the author) to use 64 bit machines with CS4. Its new architecture splits up the application into separate executables. Each executable has to be 32 bit to maintain compatibility with 32 bit machines and hence can access upto 4 GB RAM only. But, since the application consists of separate executables, the combined RAM that is available for the app is more than 4 GB. And compatibility with 32 bit machines has also been achieved.