Lightworks for Mac Finally Available for Download
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- June 12, 2014
Open Source NLE in development for over a decade
By James DeRuvo (doddleNEWS)
It’s difficult to find a solid non-linear editor that’s open source and free. Well, actually, not really. Because Lightworks has been available for download on PCs all through its development and has been used on such Academy Award winning films ranging from Quentin Tarantino‘s Pulp Fiction to The King’s Speech and even Hugo, IIRC. And after nearly a decade, it finally came out of Beta for the PC and it left Mac fans asking, when will they get a chance at it? That day has finally arrived.
A few months ago, EditShare, the company which bought Lightworks and has managed to make it both profitable and still free (EditShare charges for support and additional pro features), announced that a free public Beta of the Mac version of Lightworks would be coming by this month. And true to their word, it’s here and available for download. In Alpha for nearly a year, EditShare took feedback from select professionals in order to get it to the point where a public beta would take Lightworks to the next level.
It’s important to understand that because this is a free public Beta, that users seeking to use the Pro Version of Lightworks for Mac will be dealing with some issues and bugs that are bound to shake out. But as I mentioned before, Lightworks for PC was in Beta for over a decade and used on many film you have no doubt seen. And since it’s based on the same Unix kernel, it’s likely to be a hell of lot more stable than competiting NLEs at this stage.
And what Edit Share has done is truly revolutionary here. Because Lightworks is now available on all three platforms, including Linux, Edit Share wanted to create a process where it could push updates to all operating systems simultaneously. By doing this, Edit Share can be far more reactive to customer input and introduce fixes and new features faster via the cloud instead of treading over old ground three times in order to make all platform customers happy. A great idea.
So if you’re not sure you want to commit yourself to a monthly subscription like Adobe Creative Cloud, and you’re still bitter over what Apple did with Final Cut Pro X a few years back, now is the chance to give the open source goodness of Lightworks for Mac a shot. And Edit Share has even made a Quick Start Guide video to help you hit the ground running. There’s also a demo project for you to work on here, and other tutorials on the Lightworks website here.
But remember, it’s still in Beta.
Download it here.
Hat Tip – NFS
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