Lightworks, Sony Vegas Pro and Media 100
Video editing applications are relatively complex, high-performance products that
address a three-tier market: professional editing for TV and cinema, serious
amateur filmmakers and of course consumers making simple home movies.
Historically Non-Linear Editor (NLE) developers have often struggled to decide which
of those three market segments to address (and on which platforms).
Commercial developers must choose whether to aim at the mass-market general
user with a lower-cost product, or focus on the smaller professional market where
much higher prices can be charged, but expectations are very high.
The recent and rapid growth in the development of higher-quality, higher-resolution
digital imaging technologies — new camera file formats, 2K, 4K and even 8K
resolutions and stereoscopic 3D — adds further complications to the development of
video NLE software that’s in tune with current needs, particularly in the professional
market.
Commercial developers, such as Avid, Adobe and Apple are able to keep up with
these developments, but charge a correspondingly high price for their top-end
products. Surprisingly there are quite a few high-end software varieties that fall
into a relatively “unknown’ category but are well worth pursuing as an alternative to
the mainstream offerings.
Lightworks
Perhaps one of the better-known packages comes in the form of an old favourite
revamped. Lightworks has been around since 1989 and thanks to renewed
development by EditShare (whose main business is in workflow software, media
storage and media management) this open source software has a large band of
dedicated followers. There are two versions: Lightworks Pro and Lightworks
Free
Lightworks Pro includes support for Blackmagic, AJA and Matrox hardware I/O’s.
Project sharing, enabling groups of editors to all work and collaborate together
within their networked environment is included and Vegas supports exports to all
broadcast mastering formats such Avid DNxHD, Panasonic and Sony Formats,
AVCHD, MOV, MXF, AVI. Interchange with other applications (AVID, Protools, FCP,
Resolve) with AAF, OMF, EDL and Film Cutting Lists is part of the package.
As it states, Lightworks Free is a zero-cost version of Lightworks and has all the
power of Lightworks Pro but only allows you to export to MPEG-4 (Web, YouTube
and Vimeo) at a maximum resolution of 720p.
Sony Vegas Pro
Despite its name Sony Vegas Pro by Sony Creative Software doesn’t just offer
support for Sony cameras. They have been around for a while and are on their 13th
release.
Vegas Pro actually pioneered the concept of format-native editing, and to continue
that legacy, the latest version supports today’s most popular camcorder formats
including XAVC, XAVC S, XDCAM™, NXCAM, AVCHD, HDCAM SR™, DSLR h.264
QuickTime® and RED®, Panasonic P2 DVCPRO, and AVC-Intra.
They offer full support for SD, HD, 2K, and 4K material in 2D or stereoscopic 3D.
Not to be scoffed at, Sony’s Vegas Pro does everything other well-known NLE’s do
and so much more. Vegas is the only NLE package to include EBU Loudness
measurement tools as a standard.
Media 100
For Mac users, don’t discount “blast from the past’ Media 100!
The Media 100 Suite from BorisFX is fast, with an easy-to-use, responsive interface
and broad support for 4K, 2K, HD, and SD standards. Integration with Adobe After
Effects and Apple Final Cut Studio enables you to share projects among After
Effects, Color, and Final Cut Pro. You can export projects to Final Cut Pro for further
editing and revisions, import Final Cut Pro sequences into Media 100 Suite, or
export a Media 100 Suite sequence to Color for advanced colour grading.
Media 100 also supports optional video I/O interfaces from AJA, Blackmagic Design,
Matrox and RED and provides AVCHD, AVC-Intra, FireWire, Panasonic P2, and Sony
XDCAM acquisition interfaces. With native support for RED (2K and 4K) amongst
others, the system supports mixed codecs on a single timeline without converting or
rendering.
Forscene
An interesting development is the rising numbers of cloud based edit systems. More
international group companies are turning to systems that allow users to edit from
any location in the world using a centralised production tool.
UK technology company Forbidden Technologies plc has an impressive collaborative
edit solution called Forscene, which includes not only the usual editing features such
as ingest, logging, editing, reviewing and repurposing, but includes media asset
management and syndication. This is a high-end system favoured by many
European news agencies and sport channels. Ad agencies have been keen to adopt
the system, as have educational facilities, where collaborative edit projects between
campuses can be achieved.
In the open source environment Blender is a fantastic application for 3D animation
and special effects, is cross platform and, once you learn how to use it, includes a
pretty good video NLE. Bet you didn’t even know that…oh and it’s totally free!
– Ian Dormer
