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Lightworks Video Editor To Go Open Source
Art3x writes "EditShare will release its video editor as open source this summer. Lightworks handles high-definition media, DPX, and RED, shares projects with Final Cut Pro and Avid, and was recently used by Academy-award-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker on Shutter Island. Introduced in 1989 and bought by EditShare last year, it 'has come from over one million hours of software development,' says EditShare's James Richings. But he says releasing the source will 'generate concepts and capabilities never seen before. I expect that the Lightworks Open Source initiative will transform not only the technology, but also the opinions on what a professional editing tool can achieve.'" From the press release's description, it sounds like the "open source" phase will follow a period of free-as-in-beer downloading.
People can use instead of their stolen Adobe Premiere programs.
You can edit RED with the open source version, but you have to pay if you want to edit blue or green.
Are they going to continue to provide developers and push some form of direction?
From what I've seen the only successful OS projects are grown from scratch or 50%+ maintained by a single company.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Finding fault with Blender is* easy, and for much the same reason people find fault with GIMP -- the UI is something you either love, or absolutely despise, with very little in between.
*Referring to Blender circa 2003, so this may need to be changed to "was". The UI was bad enough at the time to make me not look back.
I'm really excited about this move. The first editing system I ever experienced when I was young was a Lightworks/Heavyworks system. My dad (a film editor, now director) loves the Lightworks systems due to their natural and intuitive control systems. I still have an old Lightwave controller sitting around that I've thought about hacking to work with the Avid.
Currently we work on Avid Media Composer, since it remains the only true pro-level editing software. Final Cut has it's pros but, at least to me, it's more for video editing (by which I mean not sourcing or finishing to film) and smaller projects (promos, commercials, shorts). If you want to cut a feature film - you use Avid. I have arguments with co-workers about FCP versus Avid but we usually arrive at the agreement that Avid is simply the standard to which all other systems are currently judged.
With the open sourcing of Lightworks I can only hope that the best of modern systems like Avid and FCP can be integrated with the very intuitive Lightworks way of working. At the very least, I hope it scares Avid and Apple at least enough to make them fix some of the problems that currently exist with their systems. More competition is always better for the end user.
Beer is free when someone gives it away. You get the liquid but not the recipe. That's the point of the analogy.
Maybe thats just me, but does anyone see any system requirements on anywhere? I read the press release, looked all over the company website and still could not find anything even remotely looking like system requirements anywhere.
I would guess that there is a Windows version and since it seems to integrate with Final Cut Pro, a Mac version seems likely as well, but there is no way to be sure and strangely, I could not find anything.
Also, it seems that Lightworks was only recently (August 2009) acquired by EditShare. Making it OpenSource now could mean that EditShare maybe was not able or willing to continue developing, selling and supporting the program and now tries to salvage something by open-sourcing it, hoping the community will pick up the slack.
I refuse to ever use C/C++, because I consider its outdated design [...] and its inelegance and programming inefficiency to be a pain to my brain.
No problem. All Lightwave development is done in LOGO. Just tell the turtle what you want it to do.
This ain't rocket surgery.
the company more or less considers the tool to be dead.
OR... the company realizes that the benefits of crowd sourcing the application far outweigh the potential monetary gains of keeping it closed source. If the company releases it via BSD license and then develops and sells closed source plugins for the architecture, the massive adoption of the core software will springboard their new plugin products. As the developers of the software, they are best positioned to be the leader in plugin development for this project.
So, the cynical view that the application is dead completely ignores the possibility that it may simply be more profitable for them to open source it.
Before commenting on the Bible, please read it first
> Why do you label him a "troll"? What he says is absolutely true; the MIT and BSD licenses are basically the most-free licenses around.
And pointless.
They could have merely put the source in the public domain if they wanted things to be a free-for-all.
The main benefit of a non Mad Max approach to Free Software is that it gives more developers a better incentive to contribute as they can be sure that their contributions won't be gobbled up by some company and then used against them. People like to forget that this is why the GPL came about in the first place. RMS didn't just decided to go on an ideological tear. His own contributors gave him grief when they found out that their work had been commercialized without their knowledge.
The GPL is a result of a failure of more open licensing.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I use ffmpeg "-ss" and "-t" options to splice videos, you insensitive clod!
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Yet that doesn't excuse the fact that it is (or was, anyway -- as I said, it's been years since I've looked at Blender) valid criticism of it, either.
And yes, there IS something wrong with learning a clunky UI, IF there's a better solution available. In my case there was, and I would have been stupid to use the worse solution simply because it was open source. Then again, I try to use the best tool for the job, instead of being blinded by any ideology; if that best tool is open source, great. If not, that's fine with me too.
Ah, but in practice, most of the time, either A. the company keeps it open source anyway (e.g. Apple with most of the lower half of Mac OS X), B. the company builds a closed source version but regularly pushes fixes upstream, or C. the software is in a device where changing out parts of the software is well beyond the skills of a typical user (e.g. your microwave oven). Most of the exceptions to that statement never gained any real traction in the marketplace.
Sure, you can point out a few prominent exceptions, e.g. Microsoft using BSD's TCP/IP stack in Windows, but do you honestly expect anybody to believe that anyone would have been served by the original stack being under the GPL? Microsoft would never have made their kernel open source anyway, so they either would have rewritten it or worse, developed a competing network standard. Either of those would have resulted in further fragmentation of the market, more bugs that users have to suffer through, and in general a worse perception of computing by the public as a whole. The only way you could reasonably argue that anyone would have benefitted from this is if you honestly believe that Windows (already the dominant platform by this time) would have lost its dominance due to Linux having a better TCP/IP stack sooner. That's a pretty big stretch of the imagination, to say the least.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Clearly not oh trollish one. The GPL maximizes the freedom of the end users, and software exists solely to be used. It also will ensure lightworks continues to benefit from this open-sourcing. Without the GPL linux would be as unused in the enterprise as FreeBSD.
I don't know how I will modded but GPL is "NOT" for end users. It does not affect end users one bit. End users do not compile or care to compile code.
If you are contributing to the codebase then you are no longer wearing the "end user" hat but a "contributing developer" hat.
BSD and MIT license grant more rights to third party developers. Full stop. GPL places some restrictions on release of binaries from code modifications which require publishing of code changes if a binary is released to the general public. Full Stop. Let's stop trying redefine terms like "freedom" and just spell out the differences.
GPL takes the approach of enforcement of rules if you want to play while BSD relies on good will and a desire to co-operate. One requires coercion and the other is completely voluntary.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Your comment is beyond awesome. That comment makes the FSM smile upon you and will get you closer to an eternity spent in the shadow of the beer volcano and within walking distance of the stripper factory.
Clearly, the freedom you get with the MIT and BSD licenses exceeds that which you'd get from the GPL.
It's not a different amount of freedom, it's a different quality, with different goals. BSD is "I want everyone to use this". GPL is "I want everyone to get the updates". We can argue about which one is better all day, but unless you understand both philosophies, it's pointless.
BSD takes into account the fact that all software can be better by using known good code. GPL takes into account the fact that writing good software is not about the code but the process that leads to the code.
buying them can run you over $150 per batch.
Depends on your ingredients and batch size. I just picked up a 50lb sack of 2-row malt for $40US, and have another on backorder. Also picked up a couple vials of White Labs yeast at half off (no, they aren't expired). I just bought 3lbs of hops (1 x Galena, 1 x Willamette, 1 x Cascade) for $40US including shipping. Propane tank fillup was $15. I'll be brewing 10 gallon batches (sorry, 38 liters for you non-imperial types, or a little over 4 cases for those bad at unit conversion and division) at a cost of ~$40 for ingredients & consumables, or about $0.50 per pint. Compare that to $4/pint at the local pub.
Unless you already own the equipment
Right. I gave up trying to cost-justify that stuff a long time ago. No one ever really owns enough equipment anyway. There's always something else you need. It's part of the fun, actually.
Then you have to count the time-consuming process of sanitizing the equipment
Ugh. The primary reason I don't brew more often.
actually brewing beer
That's the fun part! Well, one of the fun parts, anyway.
bottling it
Corny kegs, baby. Best brewing investment ever.
then drinking it before it expires
Sufficient alcohol content/hopping levels should keep infections away, if you've sanitized properly. Of course, if you're worried about consuming it before it passes peak flavor, invite friends over for a party. I promise you, they will show. However, I tend to find the old maxim true: The homebrew is ready when it's gone.
However, if you do decide to do it, it is a very rewarding experience.
Cheers to that. I take it you brew?
* Apologia pro vita sua: People homebrew for the same reasons that people use or develop FOSS. Some people are just out to save a buck. Others feel that the mass-produced and mass-marketed products are often lacking in quality, or perhaps they feel that the niche products are often pricey and have an artificially snobby following. Some do it because they realize they can produce something equal or superior (for their tastes and purposes, at least) to commercially available alternatives. Some do it just because they love doing it, they love the process of creation. Brewers usually share their creations freely with others and simply ask for a smile and tiny bit of gratitude in return. Many are content to buy basic equipment and a set of ingredients and combine them as instructed, like someone might download and use Ubuntu without ever peeking under the hood. Or, a brewer might create and refine their own recipes then share them with the world, like a developer might write applications or drivers to suit themselves before releasing it to others who might use it or improve it.
They often take pride in personally building or tweaking their hardware, whether it is a 2 x quad core server with 32 GB RAM repurposed into a badass desktop (the fans make it sound like a Cessna taking off, but who the hell cares), or a custom-welded brewstand with 3 x 170,000btu propane burners (sounds like a jet taking off - freakin' glorious).
Commercial brewers jealously guard their recipes and processes. Homebrewers love to share insights and techniques. As a matter of fact, once you get one talking you can barely shut them up (case and point). Homebrewers believe that knowledge is power, and should be shared freely. In fact, they not only personify the free as in beer / free as in speech metaphor, they improve on it, since they are generally happy to freely provide the recipe for the beer just poured you, making a hybrid case of free as in speech and beer.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
> What a bunch of retards.
>
> Do you GNU idiots actually think anyone is falling for your lame attempts at word games to cover up your shitty viral license?
I was thinking the exact same thing about you lot that have a notion of "freedom" that neglects human nature.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'm not sure when the last time you checked was - but Blender 2.5 is under heavy development at the moment - a revamped GUI is one of the major features. Also worth noting is that the GUI is written in Python and is detached from the backend Model-View style. It is highly customisable now - and the default looks and works well. You'd be happy to know that fully customizable keyboard shortcuts are also available - with presets.
The Durian team (CC movie by the Blender Institute) is a mix of the best Blender Artists working with the best Blender programmers - makes for startling progress and practical workflow.
Go have a look at a current Blender build from Graphicall.org - I think you'll be surprised. Let me know! =)
You will also need:
You can get prepackaged ingredient kits or order a la carte. For $30 - $45US, you should be able to get a kit that contains the following, which should be all you need to brew 5 gallons of beer:
There are homebrew books that are helpful in figuring out what to do and how to do it. In my experience, This is one of the best out there, and I highly recommend it for brewers of all levels. Fortunately, there is a huge amount of excellent info freely available on the internet. (Google, as always, is your friend)
The outdated look of hbd.org is misleading - you'd never know that it holds an excellent beer recipe development tool (click on "Spreadsheet") and recipe database.
Forums worth checking out:
http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/
Good luck to you, and enjoy!
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.