LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 6, 2014

A look at Lightworks 11.5

After a lengthy development and beta-testing process, video editing fans finally saw the first general release of Lightworks for Linux on January 29. Lightworks is a non-linear editing (NLE) suite with a considerable history as a proprietary Windows application. Several years ago, the developers of the product announced an ambitious plan to port it to both Linux and Mac OS X and release the result under an open source license. The new release does not go that far, but it is a promising milestone along the way. Linux users unsatisfied with their other NLE options will encounter some limitations with Lightworks (particularly the free version), but are likely to find it more powerful than most of the competition.

The first Lightworks releases date back to the early 1990s, around the same time that Avid and Adobe (who have dominated the NLE software market for ages) started their respective video products lines as well. Over the years the product itself changed hands several times, and most recently (in 2009) it was acquired by EditShare when that company purchased a rival vendor of server-side video software. Like the name itself suggests, EditShare's primary product lines had been in other areas, such as digital asset management.

Several months after the acquisition, EditShare announced its plan to port Lightworks to Macs and Linux systems and to release it as an open source project. As is often the case, though, the timeline involved in the process proved to be lengthier and less predictable than the initial estimate. The original prediction was for an open source release by the end of 2011; ultimately the reworked application was released (in closed form) for Windows in 2012, and the first Linux betas in May 2013. Mac versions have been previewed, but not yet released.

Enter the shark

The January 29 release is numbered 11.5, and the Linux packages are available for download in both RPM and Debian format, in 32-bit and 64-bit form. The officially-supported distributions are Ubuntu and derivatives (such as Linux Mint) and Fedora. The current pricing scheme makes the basic version of the application free, with a "pro" option available (either for a one-time fee or on a subscription) that unlocks the support for several additional proprietary codecs and to export at greater than 720p output resolution.

Users are also required to create a username/password combination and to sign in when the application launches. For the free version, the account info is simply the same as is used for the discussion forum and ostensibly has no other effect; for pro users the account info is also used to authenticate the availability of the paid components.

What is not clear is whether or not this sign-on process will survive to the open source release. Already the sign-on process has been revised more than once since the first beta releases of Lightworks 11; the Mac-supporting release is rumored to be numbered 12 and incorporate several other changes. Obviously it is quite possible to make an open source application authenticate to a remote server—but such a feature is likely to rankle at least a few developers (particularly if it involves relaying information about the local machine to said remote server), and EditShare's public statements about where the application is going long term leave some wondering.

Nevertheless, the sign-on process is simple enough, and those using the free edition will be happy to discover that it does not employ "nag-ware" techniques to try and push the paid options. The application itself might take some getting used to, particularly for those who have only worked with smaller or more lightweight NLEs. Fortunately, there is copious documentation available online (at the "download" link).

The biggest difference is that most other NLEs available for Linux tend to use a static window layout: scrollable list of "clips" down one side, edit timeline along the bottom, and preview/playback frame in the remaining space. Lightworks, on the other hand, is geared around floating windows and palettes that can be freely rearranged, closed, and reopened. Import some video clips, and they appear in a "bin" window. Start working on a clip, and it opens up in its own player window with its own timeline. Start assembling a scene, and a new "edit" window pops up to hold it.

In practice, this is less confusing than it might sound. For one thing, Lightworks runs full screen, and has a fixed toolbar on one side and project headers that rest at the top of the screen (in addition, the playback controls can be docked to the bottom edge of the screen, rather than being duplicated on each window, so more savings are possible). But it is also clear after working through the User's Guide that a lot of Lightworks's interface decisions exist to maximize usability on large projects. Imported clips appear in a "bin" window of their own so you can minimize that window when you need room for other things; "bins" themselves can be renamed and stacked in "racks," and you can even save several screen layouts (called "rooms" in Lightworks slang) and switch between them. In a large production, that could be beneficial, because you might have different people working on color correction and sound editing, or any number of other tasks.

Editing features and effects

Speaking of color correction, the good news is that Lightworks supports a wide range of effects and filters, including color correction (in a variety of color models), keying (better known to those of us outside Hollywood as "green screen" effects), titling, standard transitions, split-screening, and even stereoscopic 3D. Most of the complex effects include a full-featured control panel and a set of usable presets. Effects are a notoriously tricky feature for Linux NLEs; many open source projects implement a few, or implement them with a minimal set of options. Even for a small project, it is not hard to bump up against the limitations of the effects modules and experience frustration.

As far as the editing process itself is concerned, once one gets used to the window management model Lightworks is actually fairly easy to work with. None of the controls or UI elements are difficult to figure out, which is an accomplishment—many open source NLEs struggle to find the right icons and cursor shapes to indicate what sort of operations are available, and Lightworks manages to be virtually self-explanatory. It even goes so far as to highlight related windows with a border of the same color (e.g., a playback window and the timeline window associated with it) to avoid confusion.

Similarly, for the most part the functionality is located where one would expect to find it. There are NLEs, for example, that list all of the available effects in a top-level menu, even though effects can only be applied to clips on the timeline. In Lightworks, effects are only accessible in windows to which they can be applied. Fans of big screens will notice that the UI toolkit is fully scalable, and although it attempts to default to a reasonable size, it can be manually scaled up or down.

This is not to say that there are no areas for potential improvement, of course. Depending on the color scheme and surrounding environment, it can be a tad difficult to tell which audio or video tracks are active and which are deactivated, since the only indicator is a "glow" effect around the track name. There are also some editing buttons ("Replace" and "Insert") which are visible only when the playback controls are in global mode—which is presumably a bug. More sensitive users who shudder at the memory of Microsoft's Clippy might not care for the cartoon shark who lives in the corner of the screen offering how-to tips, although, to be fair, "Chompy" (or whatever its real name is) is far less talkative and intrusive.

The major limitation, of course, it that the free version of Lightworks supports a hard upper limit on output resolution (720p ), and there is no support for exporting to some of the more common video codecs. This is reasonable in theory—after all, codec licensing fees for encoders are arguably the biggest money-makers for MPEG-LA and other commercial codec-purveyors. I was, however, a bit surprised to find that "YouTube" was the only output option in version 11.5 (which evidently is a preset for .mp4 format). Not even exporting to a local file was available, although projects can be saved in Lightworks's native project format.

When we return...

The codec issue could prove to be a major obstacle with the open source community once EditShare begins releasing source code. The company's plans are not yet clear; in recent months there was talk of selling professional codecs as add-ons, in language that suggests a piecemeal approach rather than the all-or-nothing "pro license" option. But that could be reading too much into the specifics of the wording. Nevertheless, forum users have asked about free codecs like Google's VP9 already; the official response was that the company is "investigating implementation".

Obviously it is up to the company to choose what to implement now, and even in an open source project there would be a good case to be made for restricting proprietary codecs to proprietary plugins. But things could get strained if the project attempts to prevent the addition of support for free codecs. Depending on presently unknown factors like the license and the architecture of the code, outside developers might just hack in the support they want in their own forks (in fact, some certainly will).

The bigger risk is the potential for alienating the larger development community over that sort of issue. Few are likely to justify spending money for a VP9 encoder, particularly in light of the fact that Lightworks uses other open source components like FFmpeg under the hood. Declining a pull request that the community feels is a no-brainer could spawn acrimony if not handled correctly. If nothing else, a major difference of opinion means shedding outside talent who would otherwise be interested in participating in development. So far, there is absolutely no reason to expect things to go badly—but as those who follow the open source movement know, roll-outs of previously proprietary code can be tricky to manage.

Long term, it will certainly be interesting to watch where EditShare takes its project, especially what approach it takes to underwriting its development expenses. The initial decision to produce a free NLE and to release it as open source software means that the company is not out to maximize its revenue; perhaps it is not interested in competing head-to-head against larger established players like Avid and Apple, or perhaps it is more interested in linking Lightworks to its existing server-side products. At the same time, its decision to update and release paid Windows and Mac versions of the product suggest that the company is being very cautious to not alienate its existing customer base.

There are any number of other business models to consider, of course. The poster child for freeing a proprietary application and turning it into a profitable enterprise is Blender. As most people are aware, Blender funds development through a variety of means, including books and training classes. Interestingly enough, EditShare recently announced its own line of Lightworks training courses, in addition to paid support plans. Time will tell what approach it takes (and how successful it will be).

For users who have been anticipating the open source release of Lightworks since 2010, more waiting might sound like an exasperating prospect. The good news is that, based on this 11.5 release, Lightworks seems to be as solid of a project as its Windows fans suggested. The existing open source NLE projects have other questions to consider, of course. After all, Lightworks is modern and featureful, which makes it a competitor; when it joins the ranks of the open source projects, however, the prospect for "coopetition" becomes a lot more interesting. Blender's open source release significantly cut into the development of other free 3D modeling applications; a Lightworks source release could have a similar effect—but it could also bring considerably more users and attention to the Linux NLE environment.

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A possible setback for DRM in Europe

It's amazing how much the computing power of video game consoles has changed over time. For example, the Nintendo Wii, launched in 2006, features a 729 MHz CPU and 88 MB of RAM, which is quite a step up from the consoles of the 1980s. In fact, the Wii has enough power to browse the web, listen to music, and to handle most other general purpose tasks on a modern Linux distribution. That isn't just theoretical either, it is actually something that you can do. That is, it's something you can do if laws don't prohibit circumventing the DRM of the device; a recent ruling in Europe's Supreme Court involving Nintendo and an Italian company may directly affect that in the European Union (EU).

Thirteen years ago, in Directive 2001/29, the EU required its 28 member-states, including Italy (where this case originated), to pass legislation that, among other things, "provide[s] adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures". This includes prohibiting:

However, a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) — the EU's Supreme Court — may have dramatically weakened the anti-circumvention prohibition. The ECJ adjudicated a dispute between the video game behemoth Nintendo and PC Box, which is a small Italian company. PC Box markets jailbreaking tools for the Wii console and DS, a dual-screen portable handheld gaming system also from Nintendo, which are both capable of running Linux. PC Box sold Wii and DS systems with hardware modifications that allowed the execution of arbitrary code, and added homebrew video games pre-installed onto the system. The modifications broke the DRM on the consoles. Nintendo, less than happy with this, sued in Italy; the case was heard by the Tribunale di Milano (the Milan District Court, a lower court in Italy).

That court decided it best to refer the case to the ECJ to answer two questions that were dense, impenetrable, and filled with legalese. Those questions were essentially:

1. Does the anti-circumvention provision also cover video game consoles which include access control hardware, deliberately made not to be interoperable with anything else, which checks to see if video games inserted into the console include a signature that allows them to be played on the console?
2. How, if at all, are "the scope, the nature and the importance of the use of devices, products or components capable of circumventing those effective technological measures, such as PC Box equipment [...] relevant" to whether or not they fall afoul of the legal prohibition?

The court's answers were: Yes and Very, respectively.

With regard to the first, the court noted that the anti-circumvention clauses catch a lot of activity and devices: "the concept of 'effective technological measures' is defined broadly". Those devices include combining lock-out chips on game consoles with a requirement that authorized games must contain authorization code that satisfies those chips.

While a first glance reading through the court's answer to the second question might seem to appeal to DRM-supporters, the last sentence of paragraph 38 is key to an opening for reducing the scope of DRM:

That last phrase is crucial: "how often they are used for purposes which do not infringe copyright." That's the Achilles heel for Nintendo when the case goes back to Italy's courts. Applying the standard in paragraph 38 to this case, the ECJ is saying that it's up to the Italian court to decide whether or not there's a feasible alternative to DRM-circumvention (in the form of PC Box's hardware modding) for enabling the product PC Box claims to be marketing: homebrew game playing and audio/video playback on Nintendo's Wii and DS systems. If there isn't a feasible alternative, and the alleged PC Box product is, in fact, often used for non-infringing purposes, then Nintendo's case could fall apart.

But the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) was upbeat about the ruling. Essentially, its argument is that any DRM-circumvention device on video game consoles can't have any commercially significant use besides allowing the playing of infringing copies of games: "ISFE is confident that the application of the test of proportionality set out by the CJEU will enable the Milan Court to determine that the sale of circumvention devices is unlawful".

But that's simply not true. There are significant applications for repurposing video game console hardware for general-purpose computing. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications made a supercomputer by clustering Sony PlayStation 2s in 2003. Two years ago, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) clustered over 1,700 PlayStation 3s to make a powerful Linux-based supercomputer; it was so powerful that the Air Force Research Laboratory, which made the cluster, called it "the fastest interactive computer system in the entire DoD, capable of executing 500 trillion floating point operations per second." This technical achievement was also a great financial success:

There are also substantial applications for individual users and small businesses, particularly, as desktop computing solutions. Sony's PlayStation 4 features an eight-core 64-bit CPU, a dedicated GPU, 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM, WiFi, and USB 3.0 ports. That's much more powerful and also much cheaper than my relatively new laptop. Throw in a cheap monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and you could potentially have an affordable and powerful desktop computer ... if it was legal to break Sony's DRM.

Those are some of the reasons to be skeptical of the ISFE's argument. Another reason is the anxious reaction from some highly-respected lawyers in copyright law who have decades of experience. In an article titled "Does the CJEU ruling in Nintendo and Others v PC Box Srl raise serious implications for device manufacturers?", three experienced lawyers with the multinational law firm Osborne Clarke note: "The CJEU has effectively said that Nintendo may use TPMs [trusted platform modules] to prevent illegal use of videogames but not to prevent other, non-infringing, uses of the consoles." They list some of their concerns about the effects of the ruling, in particular, they find it "worrying that device manufacturers potentially have no control over what their devices are used for".

It's important to emphasize that the European Court of Justice's ruling has already set a strong precedent for the entire EU when it comes to DRM anti-circumvention law. The ECJ is the EU's top court when it comes to interpreting Directives, such as the ones that deal with DRM. No lower courts can go against the ECJ's ruling.

The Milan District Court is a lower court, but its ruling will eventually provide an example throughout the EU of how the ECJ's test for permissible DRM circumvention can be applied. Any other court anywhere in the EU dealing with a similar issue will likely look at how the Milan District Court has grappled with the issue, although it won't be bound by the ruling.

Looking at the ECJ's ruling and at Osborne Clarke's reaction, there is a good chance that Nintendo will lose this case. Hardware hackers and open-source enthusiasts residing in Europe who want to repurpose the latest video game console hardware for fun and/or profit should keep their eyes on the Milan District Court, as it will rule on the case — at a date yet to be determined. Don't be surprised if Nintendo comes out losing in a big way, so stay tuned as we watch this case unfold.

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