Lightworks Open Source

[torres-no-tan-magnifico]

From November 29th 2010 Lightworks will be available as a free download; well to anyone that has registered!

[Ritho]

I got the notice in my email about this, and was excited until I found out it is still only available for Windows right now. I was looking forward to testing it out on Linux, but they are saying it won't be ready for Linux until the end of 2011.

They promoted it as being cross platform, but it turns out it isn't yet. It really dashed the hopes of a lot of linux users. The say it is open source as well, but then the community would be able to port it to linux. But it sounds like they don't want that to happen either. So we will see what happens and if this ever really makes it to linux.

[torres-no-tan-magnifico]

I have emailed editshare about this and suggested they bring the proposed release date forward for Linux; well they stated they were working night and day!

[torres-no-tan-magnifico]

Latest news straight from the horse's mouth:

Yes, we are working all hours available! There may be a chance that the date will move forward, but we won’t really know until early next year.

Regards

James

James Richings
Managing Director
EditShare EMEA

[George]

Lightworks Open Source is available now. It can be downloaded from www.lightworksbeta.com. It requires a Matrox video codec to be installed as well. The link to it is given on the LW beta site as well.

Many users, including me, had problems running LW. Firstly, the setup routine did not create a shortcut for launching it. Secondly, when running lightworks.exe it would start loading drivers and other stuff but then just disappear. The LW forum has a thread about it already. For most of the users it worked to run ntcardvt.exe from the program folder instead.

I haven't played with it yet so I cant say anything about LW itself at this point.

[George]

First impression:

1. Totally unintuitive interface
2. Could not import any video clips (only offered MOV and AVI, gave it a few to import but failed on each and everyone of them)
3. Could not record with my webcam. I was not able to find my webcam in the device list.
4. Imported an MP3 file but was not able to playback it.
5. The application window is mainly empty. Can't find any timeline display.

The the first drive was pretty disappointing. Will try the manual and see if that helps.

[Sope]

Thanks for the info George.

Don't think I'll be rushing to install this just yet.

[Anupam]

Thanks George for the feedback. On basis of what you wrote, I think I will too wait for sometime, until I read some positive reports.

[Ritho]

Am I correct in my understanding that the source is not available for download yet? How hard is it to release a source code?

[George]

I haven't seen the source for download yet. Since it is called "Beta" still, I assume there will be some updates coming anyways.

I must say that I really don't know what to do with this software. I was not able to get a single result with it (except that it created directories in the root of both my local hard disk drives without asking me). Maybe it is more targeted to professional video editing that I am not experienced in. I have uninstalled it for now and will check back on the development of it once in a while.

Edit:
It actually created two directories on EVERY local drive, even my USB drives. I hate it when that happens without asking.