Lightworks-portable video editor; now at v146752 (Jun 28 2024)

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Lightworks-portable video editor; now at v146752 (Jun 28 2024)

Post by mikewalsh »

Evening, gang.

Now then; I've got a treat for those budding film-makers among y'all. A 'portable' version of the grand-daddy of non-linear video editors, and the one that kicked the whole genre off wayyy back in 1989:-

Lightworks

This is to all intents and purposes paid, proprietary software.....except it's possible to run a 'permanent', free trial. More on this in a moment.

I've been hum-ing & haa-ing about this for quite some time now. Many folks reckoned it was Windows-only, quite a few said they always used the online version, but a handful were saying it IS available for Linux although a PITA to figure the download out. They were bang on the money with that last statement, an' all; the perpetually self-renewing 90-day free trial is obscured to the nth degree, and I ended up getting instructions from a video-site's blog on how to read & use the website!

I'm pretty good at figuring this stuff out normally, but without a nudge in the right direction, I would never have found it if left to my own devices. Talk about hiding in plain sight. It was there in front of me all the time, but completely camouflaged. Of course, they'd rather you stumped-up for the expensive SAAS permanent monthly subscription, wouldn't they?

Getting this working has more than made up for my disappointment in not being able to get DaVinci Resolve operational... :D


I could have installed the .deb, then figured-out the necessary steps for creating the portable from that, but I decided to be clever, and figure it all out directly from the contents of the extracted .deb package. Which took a bit longer, and involved not only a dedicated launcher but also a substantially-modified version of their own 'wrapper script'.....eventually combining the two together for maximum effect (after I'd finally sussed out the right order & locations for everything)..! :roll:

This will run OK in Fossapup64 and Bionicpup64.....also the new KLV 'Airedale'. As expected, anything older than that, and you'll be whistling Dixie; glibc 2.27 or higher is required.

You'll need to visit the Lightworks website & register for a free account. This is necessary, because you want these details to 'sign-in' when the app first fires up.....having done which, you get 90 days of free use. At that point, the 'free' license expires.....but you simply sign-in again, and you're up-and-running once more; the cycle will repeat ad infinitum. No muss, no fuss.....no cost. :)

https://lwks.com/


I can only speak for myself here. Having an Nvidia card, two additional items will be required;

  • libCg.so

  • libCgGl.so

One's half a meg, the other's around 20! These are the Nvidia & OpenGL core runtime libraries; not included in the official driver packages, but easily installed from the PPM. (Search for "libcg"; "lib "cggl" should pop-up alongside it.....select and install the two together).

For KLV, I've 'borrowed' these two items from Fossapup64. It runs fine with these.

I cannot say what the procedure will be for Intel/AMD chips/GPUs. You won't know until you fire-it up; initially, I will advise launching via the terminal, since this will help to identify anything that may be needed.


Anyhoo; if anyone might be curious to take a look at this, you can find it here:-

https://drive.sukudir.com/drive/s/wWMKc ... G0Lidyrtyu

As with all the portables, d/l; unzip; move the portable's directory anywhere you like outside the 'save'. Click to enter, click 'LAUNCH' to fire it up. Scripts permit adding/removing a Menu entry if required, from wherever the thing may be. It'll even run happily from a flash-drive...

Enjoy!

Mike. ;)

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Re: Lightworks video editor.....in 'portable' format

Post by BarryK »

Mike,
That's great!

One thing though, looking at https://lwks.com/lightworks-comparison/ it looks like the free version will only export up to 720p videos.
Does yours do higher?
I would want 1080p.

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Re: Lightworks video editor.....in 'portable' format

Post by mikewalsh »

@BarryK :-

Ho, Big Puppy-Chief! :D

To tell the truth, I hadn't looked that far into it, Barry. Yes, 1080p would be nice, but for what I use it for, 720p is well within the bounds of acceptability.

There's always sacrifices when you get a free ride. I'm just amazed to be able to get the thing running like this at all, if I'm perfectly honest..! I haven't really had a chance to experiment with it yet, so watch this space....

Mike. ;)

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Re: Lightworks-portable video editor; NEW release!

Post by mikewalsh »

Right, boys & girls. It's upgrade time.

The original portable was based on the Mar 9th build. We're now at v135077 - this is the June 7th build.

I still haven't really had a proper chance to explore and find out just what this can do. On two occasions in the intervening 5 months, I've needed to quickly edit a couple of short vids, but I've stuck with Openshot for those, simply because I know what I'm doing with it.....and I just didn't have the time to learn a new work-flow from scratch.

This does run; you can sign-in, bring up the projects page, double-click a project to bring up the edit screens, etc. You can mess about with the settings, you can import/view videos, etc; it's obviously all functional, I had just hoped I would have been able to give a slightly more "in-depth" review of how well - or otherwise! - it worked.

I'll get around to it one of these days..... :oops:

-----------------------------------

Anyways; the new build is available from the link in post #1, if anyone's interested. Hope it "does the biz" for some of you!

Enjoy.

Mike. ;)

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Re: Lightworks-portable video editor; Nov '22 release!

Post by mikewalsh »

Afternoon, gang.

New year, so.....here's a new, updated build. The November '22 build, to be precise.

They've done a bit of an overhaul on the initial 'Projects' page; two rows of project 'spaces' instead of three, spaces and most functions now have rounded corners, and in general everything just looks that much smoother and properly finished. Nice.

Several new features have been added, which I haven't had a chance to look at, yet. Actually, I still haven't rendered anything with it yet, but don't let that put you off; everything appears to be fully-functional. I will eventually get around to testing, trust me!

--------------------------------------

The new build is available from the usual link in post #1. Usual caveats apply:-

  • Download

  • Unzip

  • Place wherever you like.....though preferably, outside the 'save'

  • Click to enter

  • Click 'LAUNCH' to fire it up

Additional scripts allow the addition/removal of a Menu entry, should one be required. Check out the 'MenuReadMe' for instructions. (Don't forget about the perpetually-renewing "free trial", either; re-sign in once every 90 days.....and off you go again!)

Have fun!

Mike. ;)

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Re: Lightworks-portable video editor; now at v145091 (Mar 14 2024)

Post by mikewalsh »

'Kay, gang. Upgrade time....

This is the March 14th build this year, so literally just days off the hot-plate!

No glaring changes; just general tidying-up, and making the user experience slicker than ever. It IS a good-looking app, no question of that; I've seen some screenshots of the Windows build of this, and TBH, the Linux build leaves it in the dust as far as GUI presentation goes.

I actually got around to trying a render with it yesterday.....and having done so, I'm in two minds now as to whether Openshot is still my overall favourite for ease-of-use. This thing is running it a very close second, that's for sure. Okay, things are in different places, so a small learning-curve, but nothing OTT. Once the different control locations were sussed-out, it's very easy to use.....and that's despite seemingly looking very complicated. It's not.....not really.

I DO like the dual display windows; both source, and the timeline copy you're working on. Shades of Adobe's Premiere Pro, methinks, and the same model many others have adopted.....KDEnlive and Olive both come to mind here. Given how long Lightworks has been around, I'd lay odds this is where Adobe pinched their UI design template from.

Anyways.....

The new version is available from the link in post #1. As always:-

  • Download

  • Unzip

  • Move it anywhere you like, but I'd definitely advise outside the 'save' for this baby; once multiple projects are underway, the size starts mounting exponentially!

  • Click to enter

  • Click 'LAUNCH' to fire it up

The usual menu scripts are there if you want a Menu entry for it. Don't forget to raid the PPM for those two deps; you'll need 'libCg' & 'libCgGl' if you have an Nvidia card.....even if you're running with the in-kernel 'nouveau' option. These are linked specifically to the hardware, it seems.....NOT the official driver.

Intel/AMD hardware, I can't help with, I'm afraid; I simply don't know. There's probably info online; I'd be very surprised if there wasn't.

Have fun!

Mike. ;)

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Re: Lightworks-portable video editor; now at v146752 (Jun 28 2024)

Post by mikewalsh »

Evening, gang.

'Kayyy.... It's once again upgrade time.

We're now at v146752 - dated Jun 28th this year, so about 5 weeks old. No glaring changes to the GUI; none that are noticeable, anyway. What changes have been made are all 'under the hood' and 'in the background'.

I made one interesting discovery the other day. I can't find it again, but I followed a link from one of the less well-known AV forums to a post on Lightworks' own forums.....where it seems, apparently, that one of the terms of service users of the free version agree to is to only ever use the very newest version all the time. Only subscribed users are allowed to run older builds for as long as they want..!

If free users run the older version for more than 60 days beyond the date it was superseded, it will quit working.....and everything just 'greys out' on you. Which also means that if your current distro/OS no longer supports the newest version of Lightworks - and you NEED to keep running it - you also need to upgrade your operating system too.

All of which is pretty standard for this sort of thing nowadays, unfortunately.

The new build can now be found at the 'new' link in post #1. usage instructions as above.

Enjoy.

Mike. ;)

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