Lightworks to go open source

T

TrueIndigo

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Just read on an Ubuntu forum that Editshare (who acquired the Lightworks professional NLE) announce that they will make it available for download (possibly by quarter 3 this year). Editshare propose a business model in which independent developers can create and sell plug-ins and in/out devices through a centralised Lightworks online marketplace.

This could be big news. I hope Linux is included in the platforms -- feels like I've been waiting years for Lumiera to come out and now this...wow.

www.editshare.com
 
Yeh, I signed up to get the announcement of when it's ready. Checked out some PDF brochures of their existing products and it seems they are cross platform (Mac, win, Linux), so looking good for Linux.
 
Why don't you post this at News as well, I wondered that noone did yet. This is bigger news than most NAB announcements to me :)

EDIT: except for Da Vinci Resolve being announced as Mac Software for 995,- $ o_O
 
"I'm so excited!... I just can't hide it!.."
The only thing that could make me abandon Vegas is a Linux NLE that is comparable.
 
I'm the same! I use FCP at work but at home it's Windows and Vegas Pro. I'm still on 8.0c which doesn't read my mts files from the GH1 so I use a proxy system for the off-line (use a utility to make a SD widescreen mov).

Last several years I've been messing around with Linux, I've gone through a few distros and settled on Ubuntu now after hating KDE 4.0 when it came out. I periodically try the usual suspects (LiVES, PiTiVi, Kdenlive -- though it needs a lot of libraries with Gnome, Kino is a bit too simple), but there's always something lacking. Cinelerra seemed very unintuitive to me, but I had hopes for the replacement called Lumiera, but it's still not out. Now though OpenShot has come from nowhere and looks to be a nice little editor and will even be in the main Ubuntu repo for Ubuntu 10.4. Development is enthusiastic and there's a good feel about it's simplicity -- have you tried it yet? I've been using an earlier version but will get the current one when I install the latest Ubuntu next month.

www.openshotvideo.com

This latest news though about Lightworks going open source could be significant for Linux and may be the final solution for me to go over to Linux for my workstations. I am typing this on a Linux laptop -- Linux has met all my requirements for a general machine, but for a NLE and compositing, I am stuck with Windows. Hope this is the change in inertia I would like to see.

Cheers.
 
I believe it's XP and 7 only. (which I'm on.)

I'm holding my breath for the release as well. This has potential for a big impact.
 
So I got a quick demo at the HD World trade show yesterday, here are my initial observations:

Windows only for the near future. Mac & Linux versions may appear sometime in the future, after LW has been open sourced.

The free, closed source version of Lightworks should become available as early as next month. EditShare's legal department is still trying to sort out copyright & licensing issues before creating an open source project, and many future features will be deferred to the open source project.

The closed source version will be available as software only for free, or as a turnkey system (starting in the mid 5 figures, depending on options) including the funky LW controller. IO hardware is initially limited to the same OEM board from Matrox that their Geeves servers uses, and only on the turnkey system. They expect to support Black Magic Designs' Decklink and AJA's Kona boards on the free version sometime in the future.

Now the good news. There's stereographic 3D editing. Fairly simple & straight forward, you can toggle your display between anaglyph, side by side, top & bottom and play out the dual-link SDI if you have it, or over DVI if you don't have a capture card. LW retains all of the features it previously had. And it's free!

There's no manual to download, yet. It's being re-written, so details are hard to come by if you can't find a system to look at. The demo I got was by a salesman, not an editor, so I didn't really get to see it put through it's paces.
 
How was the interface? Does it look close to anything we've seen in other editors? I've never seen the Lightworks product.
 
LightWorks.jpg

Not sure if the new version still looks like this


Also see
http://staging.macvideo.tv/editing/features/index.cfm?articleId=3238849&pagType=samecat
 
Yup, still looks like that. Floating windows. the salsesman who showed it to me didn't have the windows arranged in a logical way, so it looked kind of jumbled up & confusing.
 
Wrote an e-mail to Editshare about the release date, this was their response:
Hello and thanks for writing!

We appreciate the enthusiasm, we're just as excited for the release! We are hoping to be able to release Lightworks as a free download in the next 2 weeks. Our target date is 17th November. Obviously it is possible this could slip, but this is what we are working towards. We'll be in touch!
Click to expand...

Good to know!
 
I have to say, the level of enthusiasm at EditShare for Lightworks is very encouraging.

Lightworks had become something of an orphan, with only a small user base. Media 100 was in a similar situation, and got bounced around from buyer to buyer until it landed at Boris, where it's gotten a new lease on life.

Lightworks is in a much better position now that M100 was then, since it's feature set & interface are more up to date & competitive with Avid & FCP than Media 100 was when it first fell behind.
 
I'm really excited about this.
I'm completely tired of Mac OSX Vist...errrr... Snow Leopard and I'm willing to switch to Windows, so I'm testing NLEs and I have a good feeling about this one.
 
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