Lightworks Beta For Mac

Lightworks has officially unveiled a date to release it’s public beta for Mac. If you aren’t very familiar with you’re in good company. Lightworks is currently a Windows and Linux based video editing application, and while it’s not as popular as some other editing platforms such as Apple, Adobe, or Avid, it has a 20 year history. Big budget editors such as Tariq Anwar of The King’s Speech and Jill Bilcock of Road to Perdition have used Lightworks as their NLE of choice for years. With Red native format supporting, exporting in the background, multicam editing, and project sharing for editing in groups, Lightworks is aiming to be a contender against the other popular NLEs.

Lightworks will boast the only tri-platform support (Windows, Mac, and Linux) but as of right now you can only use it on a Window’s and PC machine. That is all scheduled to change very soon. In an interview with RedSharkNews, Matt Sandford, the Global Product Manager for Lightworks stated: “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 of 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” The best part is Lightworks is free with an unlimited trial period. The only catch is if you want to export a file format larger than 720p you must pay for the “Pro” software which is available through a membership (7.99 a month or 79.99 a year) or outright purchase for 279.99 (which is much cheaper than any other major editing applications).

Be on the lookout for the upcoming Mac release! Do you currently use Lightworks? Looking forward to the Mac release? Share in the comments below.

Yes were are a site about Final Cut Pro, but we have been following the story of Lightworks since it was acquired by EditShare. They promised support for OSX back at IBC 2012 and that's exactly what they've are showing.

Lightworks Download For Mac

Lightworks has has a chequered career. It's been bought and sold, forced to run on overpriced servers and very sadly it was almost put out to pasture before EditShare took it under their wing. Lightworks is as old as Avid and the Wikipedia page makes for a good read.

It still has is a loyal following of film editors, as an example, Oscar winning The King's Speech was edited using Lightworks. We think with the support of EditShare offering the editor as a free download, it really has a bright future. So we decided to take a look at Lightworks running on the Mac and although the program still has to go through a couple of stages of beta testing, it was up and running. The films cut on Lightworks.