If you are not educated enough to know that every mac IS a PC (and absolutely not the best one) - we've no common ground to exchange views. Your opinion about MC being the Holy Grail of a professional NLE makes me suspicious about your common sense also. But it's your professional business, your money and your career - not mine. Have a nice day

Drkuli - you hit the nail on the head every time. Back in the days before hand holding and the nanny state, we bought the best we could for our business and did not rely on everything being "free". I used Autocad from issue one, bought a Summagraphics tablet, printed an overlay, customized some areas and had a perfect interface, hardly a mouse click used. Sadly, no drivers now for that old tablet, but something like a Waycom could be used perhaps?

If we are talking about hardware - I always buy the best in its time, within given budget. Software, even very professional, tends to evolve into bloatware these days, so I take extreme care of what I install on my machines. Being it paid or free is of secondary importance to me. In fact, I use EDIUS and ProCoder, both are paid software. I don't use some widespread paid software not because it's paid, but because it's BAD for me and has better alternative, very often the free one.

Wacom's offer is pretty good and differentiated today, so if one has enough design/graphic jobs, why not to use the tablet? If one would be familiar with it, why not to use it as an interface in any software? But this thread has a much broader meaning than the discussion about interface, its importance (or absence of it) for LW a.s.o.

I'm sorry to roughly edit this post but this forum does not allow unsubstantiated criticisms of other manufacturer's products. Comparisons using evidence are fine, but generalised sweeping put-downs are not appropriate on this forum which, remember, is run by Editshare. Your support of Lightworks is, of course, appropriate! - Forum Admin

DVCINLV2005 wrote:

Dude, your bias is obvious but now you are starting to sound irrational as well. Stillborn? How can it be stillborn when it isn't even born yet? It is still an embryo. It's in Beta. It's not out yet. It's not ready for primetime yet. It's NOT born yet.
Stillborn?

DVCINLV2005 wrote:


Really? Now that's funny since I re-discovered Lightworks exactly because it was mentioned on a FCP board as an alternative to FCP-X AND I'm looking at Lightworks exactly as a replacement to FCP/FCP-X as well ...

DVCINLV2005 wrote:


Yes, because FCP 7 is so up to date (and look what happened when they tried to "update" it) and AVID has completely changed their paradigm from the late 1980's and this is why people still use it (sarcasm if you didn't catch it!).
If Lightworks was 1990's technology it would still look like it did back then, it would not be able to edit 4K or even 2K for that matter and it would not have all the features it has now, which it picked up throughout these 20 years of evolution. But I'm sure you know that. You just have no more argument and are trying to keep face. Actually your evasive reply shows just that.

DVCINLV2005 wrote:


Did you see the roadmap list?
How long did it take Apple to upgrade (hhmm, downgrade) FCP again? People have been waititng for at least 6 years.

DVCINLV2005 wrote:


It can import iMovie projects but not FCP 7 projects. Does that tell you Apple is really worried about the pro market and will make FCP-X into a pro application in the near future or ever?

DVCINLV2005 wrote:


MC is only $995 if you are a FCP user. Otherwise it's $2495.

But having said that, I COULD afford Media Composer.

This is the thing. My interest in Lightworks IS NOT because it is free or because it's open source. Actually I already mentioned that in my opinion I would rather have Lightworks being free-ware than open source so Editshare could control the future of the application. I would hate for somebody to try to turn Lightworks into Premiere or an After Effects + Premiere wannabe. Actually for me Lightworks could even be a software only commercial application and I would still buy it.
I was ready to jump into FCP-X till Apple actually released it and I saw what it really was .... So I had to look elsewhere and as I never liked AVID that much I was really running out of options and was even considering Media100, till I re-found Lightworks. I like the Lightworks way of editing and the way it does things. It's not because it is free and it will not be entirely free if you want to do pro work. You will at least need codecs. Lightworks gave me an alternative to having to go with AVID and a solution to the FCP-X fiasco!

I may be in a different position to most users but I do not need Lightworks to do fancy things. For that I already have a real Compositing application (No, it's not After Effects. That's for Motion Graphics) and a 3D application as well (not Blender) and also a Color Grading application (not Apple Color. Well, not anymore or Colorist either) in my suite. I need Lightworks for editing. Editing feature length films. I need an editor which is fast, streamlined and allows me to be creative and tell my story without much mabo-jambo on the way. I couldn't care less for fancy transitions or Compositing wannabe features inside an editor. I need Lightoworks to let me cut and order my shots in the most fluid way possible, so I can spend more time looking at my editing options rather than looking through infinite menus and clicking all over my screen with a mouse to find editing tools.

For that, feature-wise, Lightworks is basically perfect already, with very few exceptions which are already on the roadmap.

DVCINLV2005 wrote:


This is not entirely true. Although yes, free will always attract consumers, Lightworks workflow is attractive enough to appeal to professionals. It only needs better marketing than it has had in the past. Besides, as I said, it will hardly be free if you want to do pro work.

AVID became the industry standard and it still is, but in the beginning, it shared with Lightworks. But wrong corporate decisions gave AVID the edge even though Lightworks had much more going for it, specially for the early NLE users which were all coming from a KEM, Steenbeck or Moviola. Not always the best product wins. We saw that in the Betamax vs VHS battle.

If you think AVID is not worried about their main rival at the birth of the NLE being now offered for "free" you would be fooling yourself. Actually, maybe you are an AVID shill?

Anyways, if Editshare would release Lightworks just with all the features listed on the roadmap and find a way to offer the console for half the price they are asking now, I believe they would seriously give Media Composer a run for it's money.

Lightworks doesn't need to change to feel more like AVID or FCP. FCP itself didn't try to immitate AVID per se. People got used to and adopted the Apple way of doing things. The same can happen with Lightworks. It doesn't need to morph into more of the same to be successful. It has a better chance by being a different option, offering a different way. If people like it they will adopt it. And since the Lightworks way offers so much and has so many things going for it from an editing point of view, I don't see a problem with it being accepted as long as people are educated about it.

There's a reason why many editors who tried Lightworks back in the day still uses it till this day. The Lightworks way works and works fast. Why didn't people like David Gamble (Shakespeare in Love, Cold Feet), Ian Crafford (Hope and Glory, Field of Dreams, Never Say Never Again), Terry Rawlings (The Phantom of the Opera) Tariq Anwar (The King's Speech, American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, The Good Shepherd) and Thelma Schoonmaker (Shutter Island, The Departed, The Aviator and pretty much all the Scorsese films digitally edited), why didn't they use Avid which is the industry standard or even FCP? Because there's a market for Lightworks. The word just needs to get out.

drkuli wrote:
DVCINLV2005 wrote:


Well, this point I fully agree with you DVCINLV2005. A "pro" should be able to make enough money to cover his overheads and accordingly charge his clients.

DVCINLV2005 wrote:


Now you did it again. Really, FCP-X can not export an EDL but can export directly to youtube? Really? Can't you see the writing on the wall?

Listen, I also have a MacPro and it is a great machine and OSX is a great OS. But a Windows machine is just as useful. Stop drinking the Koolaid! Besides your mighty AVID also runs on Windows. Why is that? Several other high end applications still run only on Windows, such as 3DS-Max, Lightwave and Eyeon Fusion.

Get off the Apple bandwagon. They have already left you behind.

LW_for_Feature wrote:
It's obvious and beyond the discussion. But is used as a false argument, that only the amount of money invested differentiate pro and non-pro, which is simply not true. I've never said here, I can't afford whatever investment, which I need for my work. It was DVCINLV2005's post suggesting I can't, what's simply too ridiculous for me, to answer it.

All 'pro' vs 'non-pro' arguments are pointless, if not false. Not only does the (implied) definition of 'pro' and 'non-pro' vary with each argument, but the difference between editing for, say, news broadcast or editing feature films is more important then the difference between getting paid money for editing or not.