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Lightworks Mac Public Beta
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[Bill Davis] “the art director supplies”
What app are you using to turn illustrator art into {whatever you need} & what is that you need, for you X-flow?
Thanks!
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Even given the Mac centric nature of this forum, the truth is that the Windows & Linux versions of Lightworks has been available for a long time. I played with it 18 months ago. As an edit tool it is good but my focus is potential use for finishing so things like round tripping with Resolve were more important as well as translating projects imported from other systems and titling.
Obviously Resolve 11 as a finishing tool has my attention now and I would be happy to use it as an edit tool for the little editing I need to do. But the questions being posed as to whether this beta release might signal a game changer seems strange to me as it is only one OS platform being added and so far Lightworks, although significant, has not changed the world. Given that NLEs like FCPX are not cross platform, the fact that Lightworks now is shouldn’t significantly change anything apart from being on some peoples radar now.
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[Michael Gissing] “Lightworks now is shouldn’t significantly change anything apart from being on some peoples radar now.”
Post, at least broadcast and film post, is a pretty Mac-centric environment so I think Lightworks is going to get a bigger look now just because it’s available on the most used OS. While I agree Lightworks probably won’t set the world on fire I think the NLE race is still wide open and Lightworks has an opportunity to carve out a chunk.
FCPX has improved a lot but many people are still turned off by it.
Adobe & PPro were all poised to swoop in and probably take up the vast majority of FCP 7 users that were expecting a FCP 8 but the timing of the Create Cloud move couldn’t have been worse.
Avid is still the most expensive option (though pricing is much more comparable than in days past) but they are having some corporate leadership and accounting problems that bring into question their ability to offer competing products (and keep the company from folding).
Lightworks has pedigree (even if it’s not famously known like some other NLEs), a familiar workflow, an affordable price point and maybe (I’ve never used it before) the best multi-editor experience besides Avid+ISIS.
The NLE market is just totally up for grabs right now. Hell, DaVinci Resolve 11 was the talk of NAB based on the assumption that Blackmagic was going to eventually make Resolve into a deep, full fledged NLE.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Post, at least broadcast and film post, is a pretty Mac-centric environment…”
Not if you’re talking broadly about post. 3DS doesn’t even have a Mac version as an example. I’ve actually been to post houses where the 3D/VFX sides were all PCs… HP workstations running Linux and Windows are really popular for high end VFX work BTW. 🙂
Shawn
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[Shawn Miller] “Not if you’re talking broadly about post. 3DS doesn’t even have a Mac version as an example. I’ve actually been to post houses where the 3D/VFX sides were all PCs… HP workstations running Linux and Windows are really popular for high end VFX work BTW. :-)”
Good point. I don’t work on FX heavy things so besides finishing possibly being done on a PC running Linux I rarely run into PCs on a typical gig. Now that I think about it the last time I was on a project where someone was cutting using a PC was ’05/’06.
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It all depends on the geography and the type of work. Lots of AVIDs are PC and with the long dev time and possibility of no more Mac Pros, I have seen a lot of editors go to PC in the past three years.
Many tried Lightworks but it came at a time when 7 was abandoned and Adobe Pr made big strides so you might be surprised at the number of converts to PC. Lots have been running Hackintosh Mac dual boot just quietly.
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[Andrew Kimery] ” Now that I think about it the last time I was on a project where someone was cutting using a PC was ’05/’06.”
Holy crap! Nearly a decade without seeing a single PC in editorial. Sounds like it really is down to the circles that you run in.
Shawn
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[Shawn Miller] “Holy crap! Nearly a decade without seeing a single PC in editorial. Sounds like it really is down to the circles that you run in. “
When I was cutting on Avid, the Mac/PC mix seemed to be about 50/50. As FCP grew and as OS X matured, almost all of the PC shops I knew went Mac.
A couple years ago, when I switched back to PCs for daily use, most folks in my circle (especially the ones I had helped transition to Apple in the first place) thought I was crazy. Today, they are more curious and some even interested — especially when I show up with an HP Z-series workstation and a Surface — but a lot of them still think of Windows XP and are very hesitant to switch platforms again, even for good software.
I think that Lightworks missed an important window by not having a Mac version in beta two or three years ago during the Great NLE Shakedown.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Shawn Miller] “Holy crap! Nearly a decade without seeing a single PC in editorial. Sounds like it really is down to the circles that you run in. “
Starting from the time I was in college (late ’90’s) I can probably count the times I’ve personally seen PCs used for editing on one hand and that includes time in the Midwest and time on the West Coast. News stations and local PBS affiliates to promo/trailer houses to network TV shows to feature length docs. 99% Mac.
I know people cut on PCs too but apparently fate doesn’t want me to see any of them. lol
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[Walter Soyka] “A couple years ago, when I switched back to PCs for daily use, most folks in my circle (especially the ones I had helped transition to Apple in the first place) thought I was crazy. Today, they are more curious and some even interested — especially when I show up with an HP Z-series workstation and a Surface — but a lot of them still think of Windows XP and are very hesitant to switch platforms again, even for good software.”
Very interesting. In my small corner of the world (corporate stuff), the freelancers, agency types and staff “video producers” are still pretty evenly split between Mac and PC. But that’s just editors and mid-level mograph artists. Most of the high-end VFX folks that I’ve been lucky enough to interface with, don’t seem to care about platform at all. They are usually more concerned with performance and stability, and they don’t seem to care much about the OS or the badge on the chassis. 🙂
[Walter Soyka] “I think that Lightworks missed an important window by not having a Mac version in beta two or three years ago during the Great NLE Shakedown.”
Totally agree, I hope it’s not too late though. As much as I like the idea of Resolve 11 providing more competition in the NLE space, I think the landscape is made just that much better by having another serious player on the field.
Shawn
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