It has been almost a year to the day when Editshare shared that their award-winner NLE Lightworks was going through alpha/beta testing for Mac OS X, and since then the question on the minds of its supporters has been, "When will the public beta of the mac version be available?" Well, it looks like they're much closer to completing the platform trifecta (Windows, Linux, and Mac), because Editshare has announced that they indeed have a date nailed down, as well as a few other pertinent pieces of information about Lightworks that you might want to know.
According to an article from RedShark News, Lightworks has been retooled a bit to accommodate the NLEs platform versatility, resulting in an "elegant solution where features and fixes can be added across the three platforms without incurring three times the work." As promised last year, the testing process for the Mac version of Lightworks has followed that of both the Windows and Linus versions -- alpha then public beta then go to release -- and now the public beta version is upon us, and the release date is set for June 11, 2014.
RedShark News spoke to Matt Sandford of Lightworks about the upcoming release date. Here's what he had to say:
The most common question we get asked is when will Lightworks be available on Mac? Well, we are pleased at last to say with confidence that the Mac Public Beta will begin on the 11th June 2014. Before that though there will be a short Alpha program to a dedicated select team of users. These are users that have requested Alpha access in the past and are keen to help make sure that the Mac version is on track where it needs to be. This is the exact same process we did with the Linux version. The Mac version has been in existence for some time, so is already very stable, but because reliability is essential we are looking to test this intensively from Alpha through to Beta
Though most production companies are a part of the AAA club (Adobe, Apple, Avid), some of the biggest titles in cinema have utilized Lightworks in the last 20 years of its existence, including The King's Speech, Pulp Fiction, and 28 Days Later. In fact, Lightworks is the go-to NLE for Academy Award-winning editor and frequent Martin Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker, who has used it to edit Hugo, The Departed, and most recently, The Wolf of Wall Street.
If you're trepidatious about giving Lightworks a whirl, this summer might be a good time to give it a try, since it'll most likely be free -- or, if you'll be at NAB this year, you can get your hands on it at their booth.
What are your impressions of Lightworks? What are the pros and cons of using this NLE as opposed to Premiere, Avid, or Final Cut? Let us know in the comments below.
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