Renato Sanjuán
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Thanks for reminding me of one of my all time favorite comedy shows. I hear they’re shooting a new season.
Classic Red Dwarf moment: The Vindaloovians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS5djugBQIM
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FWIW, I spent a few months working on Lightworks/Heavyworks back in 1997/98. I came from a Media Composer background and it took a little getting used to, but it was in no way a turd. It was a superb tool to cut on and all the film editors I worked with preferred it to Avid. Which makes sense because it was designed precisely with film editors –who were still cutting on moviolas- in mind. Most of them didn’t want to switch and Lightworks was very much like a digital flatbed.
Trimming and media management (two big things for my type of work) were every bit as good as Avid’s. And it was rock solid. It hardly ever crashed and if it did you didn’t loose a keystroke, everything was instantly saved.
I have no idea what went on in the company, but I always felt that Lightworks got eaten alive by Avid because of it’s abismal fx toolset.
Lightworks is currently a beta release and they’re in the process of going open source, so bugs are to be expected. They boast some pretty cool features on their web site but I haven’t installed it yet, so I can’t say what’s real and what’s not.
I don’t think it will ever appeal to folks who do a lot of fx & compositing because it’s not built for that, but I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on it.
And if it takes off and the price goes down I might even get myself a Lightworks console and edit away, free as a bird… (now I’m fantasizing, but the console was waaay cool).
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Worry not.
It’s well known that, upon seeking access to Editor Heaven, the Patron Saint will examine your hands to see if they bear the signs of having chored through badly shot footage, poorly scripted dialogue, indecisive clients and insanely short deadlines.
“And the doors of Editor Heaven will be open for you, yay, and for those who miss them there will be Kems and Steenbecks and linear editing suites, and even that Matrox linear-non linear hybrid from the 90’s that I cannot remember the name of.
And there will be the perfect nle for everyone, with trackless magnetic timelines and demagnetized heaps of tracks to choose from, and renders and codecs will be forgotten, and roundtripping will be perfect but unnecessary because all footage will be perfectly shot and framed and sound will be pristine.”
At least I think that’s what they told me when I was at school… -
Mark’s right. Definite improvement.
I hope this helps to open doors for you.
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The most famous short story ever written in Spanish, by master storyteller Augusto Monterroso, translates roughly as this:
“When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.”
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Yeah, it doesn’t hurt to have a basic understanding of these things so you can hold your ground when you’re around a certain kind of crowd, but that’s about it. Fortunately editing (and storytelling) don’t fit in a formula.
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FWIW, I wouldn’t really worry about it unless you’re planning to major in narrative theory.
The basic three acts are enough for any mainstream film/show. It’s been ages since I saw Raiders of the Lost Arc but I’m pretty sure the usual 3 acts are there. The other 4 would come from splitting the classic 3 in an arbitrary (and I might add unnecesary) fashion.
When I edit fiction I’m aware of the acts upon reading the script, but I don’t really worry about them once I’m doing the actual editing. If I were to tell the writer were I think one act ends and another begins, he or she would probably not agree. People argue about that all the time. And scripts get changed during the editorial process.
Documentary is different. A documentary (or a non conventional narrative) might be divided into three acts or not. I’ve done plenty of unscripted docs and my approach is more in the line of “finding” the story as work progresses, ie first getting rid of the “bad” parts, then start refining. Of course you need some basics: you’ll usually have some kind of first act or introduction and some kind of conflict or goal to be resolved in the end. Sometimes the conflict is not resolved and it’s not a problem because that’s what you want to say.
Think of the ending of the Sopranos. Where’s the resolution in that? The lack of resolution IS the resolution.
Once you abandon the basic narrative model, pretty much anything goes. It’s just a matter of taste and talent. Plenty of great films don’t fit the three act structure. Godard, Tarkovsky and Buñuel come to mind.To end this rather long rambling, I’ll tell you that I enjoy film theory and have studied it at school and at university, but I try to “forget” it when I’m editing. I think films are basically about emotion and being overly analytical kills that for me.
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MacDrive works great. I also use Tuxera for the opposite task (read/write to NTFS drives on a Mac).
If you’re going to reencode your footage, you’re better off doing it to a DNxHD flavor. DNx is Avid’s equivalent of Prores. The number indicates the bitrate and if it has an X it means 10 bit. For example, DNxHD 220X means 220 Mbits/sec 10 bit.
Depending on size/framerate of your footage there will be different codecs available.You can download the Avid codecs for free on this page. They come in pretty useful in these post apocalyptic times we live in since last June.
And here is an excellent chart that explains all you need to know about Avid codecs. It was posted by Shane Ross a few days ago.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/45/884884
Avid can link to Prores files via AMA, but everything will be smoother if the codec is Avid’s own. This would also allow you to “fast import” the files in Avid (ie rewrap the DNxHd essence into MXF files).
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It looks very much like it did in 1997 when it ran under MS-DOS, which was pretty mind blowing even way back then. Coming from the Avid Mac interface it was kind of a shock at first, it looked pretty ancient with the flat colors and all. I eventually got used to it and even liked it.
The shark icon that served as a wastebasket has also made it into the 21st century.I thought they would completely rework the GUI, but they’ve decided to proudly acknowledge their heritage as one of the most venerable nles out there I guess. I wonder if they’re not worried that some people may be put off by it.
On the other hand they’re the first nle to sport a genuinely retro interface…
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I remember doing my first paid jobs on a Lightworks back in the days when I was a youngster and I was just out of film school.
It died off a few months after that.Not the sexiest GUI on the planet and effects were very limited, but editing was a pleasure. Excellent media management and a trim function that was every bit as good as Avid’s. I use trim a lot so that’s a big thing for me. It was very easy to use once you got used to it. I don’t remember any problems switching from Avid to Lightworks.
I read effects are very much improved but I haven’t tinkered with it yet.
I also recall some very modern traits such as instant saves of every command, rock solid stability and the ability to use search filters to make “temporary bins” that you could trash once you’d edited with them. Meaning you would organize your footage into bins and the bins into “racks”, just like you would do on any other nle, but you could also search based on criteria and make “temporary bins” that were trashed when you closed them (unless you specifically wanted to keep them). It was a cool way of finding footage and working with it without ending up with a ton of bins cluttering your project.
Edls and cut lists were very powerful and nicely implemented, so if they’ve built on that I would guess it’s probably very optimized for collaborative workflows.
I’m happy Lightworks is alive again. I really hope it takes off.
If it delivers the features they advertise on the Lightworks website it should be ready for even the most elaborate workflows. They are building on what was already very stable and excellently designed software over 15 years ago, so there’s reasons to be hopeful.All in all, if you can wait I’d say it’s definitely worth a look. Mac version was due at the end of November 2011, so hopefully it will be out soon.