Adobe has taken a significant step forward by launching public beta versions of its flagship applications—Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Media Encoder—optimized for Windows on Arm. This release marks an important milestone in Adobe’s commitment to expanding its software capabilities across different hardware architectures.
However, users should be aware that these beta versions come with certain limitations. Notably, the native ARM64 version of Premiere Pro currently lacks support for third-party extensions, as well as the ability to handle raw video files such as ProRes. Additionally, the much-anticipated hardware-accelerated playback and export functionalities for H.264 and HEVC in MP4 format are not yet available. Adobe has acknowledged these gaps, indicating that they are working on incorporating these features in future updates.
Similar challenges are present in Adobe After Effects for Windows on Arm. Users will find the absence of ProRes support, along with restrictions on importing and exporting various file formats including ARRIRAW, SWF, GoPro CinePro, JPEG20000 in MXF, and WMV. The beta version also does not support MotionJPEG and MKV imports, and like Premiere Pro, it lacks hardware-accelerated playback and export for H.264 and HEVC in MP4. Adobe has noted that third-party plug-ins for After Effects will require updates to function with this new Windows on Arm version.
Audition and Media Encoder, both part of this beta release, share similar limitations, further emphasizing the transitional nature of these applications as they adapt to the ARM architecture.
Adobe’s journey into the world of ARM began with the beta release of Photoshop for Windows in late 2020. However, the transition for Premiere Pro and After Effects has taken longer than anticipated. For users of Qualcomm-powered Copilot Plus PCs, the past year has seen reliance on emulated versions of Premiere Pro, which have struggled to deliver the performance required for intensive video editing tasks.
