Lumit

Release

Lumit v0.6.0

Shared projects, improved setup, Text and Paragraph panels, PSD import, packed project files, and a lot of interface fixes.

All releases
v0.6.0

Projects can now be shared, and allow several people to edit the same project at the same time. New users get a setup screen and a guided tour of the interface, and text layers have proper Text and Paragraph panels. Along with this, PSD files import as layered comps, a project can be packed into one file, and there is a long list of interface fixes and quality of life changes.

Shared projects are brand new and have only been tested on a small scale, so please test and report any issues so that we can clean them all up before the next release.

What is new

Shared projects

  • File ▸ Shared project… lets several people edit one project at once. One person hosts and gets an invite to send, and the others can join.
  • Edits appear for everyone as they’re made, and two people can work on the same layer at once. Undo only takes back your own edits.
  • Each person has a colour. It marks the comps they have open, the layers they’ve selected, their playhead in the Timeline, and their pointer in the Viewer.
  • Footage isn’t sent. A guest picks a footage folder when joining, and each item is matched to a file in it by name and then by content.
  • If the host goes away the guests can keep working, and their edits merge back in when the host returns. Anything both sides changed waits in a Conflicts window with Keep mine or Keep theirs.
  • Guests connect straight to the host’s computer over a local network or a VPN, so nothing goes through a server. Up to 16 people can join.
  • Everyone in a shared project needs to be on the same version of Lumit to be able to share work.

Getting started

  • The setup screen on first launch now also asks for style, colour scheme, toolbar position, and motion. Each choice applies as you pick.
  • Improved the look of the setup screen with additional images to help visual options. Vegas has a tick to only change the default Retime graph, which leaves video arriving as a normal layer, instead of in a Sequence layer.
  • A guided tour runs after the setup screen, and walks through the project panel, Viewer, tools, Timeline, effect controls, workspaces, and the node graph. Help ▸ Lumit tour runs it again.
  • Picking After Effects on first run loads the After Effects keymap.

Text

  • Text and Paragraph panels. Text layers can use any installed font, and have leading, kerning, tracking, scale, baseline shift, caps, a stroke, alignment, indents, and spacing.
  • Text can run across more than one line, with Shift+Enter in the Type tool.
  • Click to place the caret, drag to select, double-click for a word, and triple-click for the line.

Importing and projects

  • A PSD imports as a comp the size of the document, with a layer for each Photoshop layer. Name, opacity, visibility, blend mode, and top-level groups are kept, and layer masks and clipping masks are applied.
  • File ▸ Packed project file saves a project with all of its footage inside the .lum, so the one file can be handed to someone else. It has Pack, Unpack, and Pack automatically.
  • Settings ▸ Shortcuts can read the shortcut file After Effects saves, so custom binds carry over. The same page has a keyboard picture showing which keys are taken on each of the Ctrl, Alt, and Shift layers.
  • Dropping files anywhere on the window imports them.
  • Closing a project with unsaved changes asks if you’d like to save first.

The Timeline

  • Hold Ctrl and drag the ruler to hear the comp’s sound under the playhead. Works in layer view, graph view, and the Audio timeline.
  • Tab opens a flowchart at the pointer, with the open comp in the middle, the comps it’s used in on the left, and the comps it contains on the right. Also under the Composition menu.
  • Right-click menus on a layer bar, an empty lane, and the ruler.
  • Moving or trimming a bar shows its in, out, and duration.
  • A Break handles toggle at the bottom of the graph editor. The key for it can also be changed from Alt to Ctrl under Settings ▸ Shortcuts.
  • Effects can be dragged from Effects & presets straight onto a layer.
  • Still layers are the full length of the comp when added, and their length can be adjusted.
  • Double-click a layer name to rename it, drag down a switch column to set several layers at once, and Alt-click solo to solo just that layer.
  • Switches now opens on visibility, solo, and lock, and Modes on fx, 3D, and motion blur.
  • Matte, blend, and parent pickers at their default show as muted text until you hover the row, and switches that are off are dimmer.
  • New icons for fx, motion blur, and the four interpolation buttons, and the render times column can be toggled from the bottom strip.

The Viewer

  • Arrow keys nudge the selected layers by a pixel, or 10 with Shift, and Shift keeps a move to one axis.
  • Right-click opens a menu with Select, Align, Fit, and the overlays.
  • Double-click a text layer to edit it, or a precomp to open it.
  • A line shows what a move snapped to.
  • Moving several layers is now one undo step.

Node graphs

  • A Custom shader’s box carries a small picture of its inner graph, and clicking it opens the graph. This works inside a node graph too, and the effect controls have an Open graph button.
  • Depth of field, Motion blur, and Matte key have an output socket per view, so Rendered and Focus map can be wired separately.
  • The Expression driver has Add input and Remove input buttons. Each input is a number socket the expression reads by name, for instance input_1 * input_2.

Effects and plugins

  • An Expressions panel under Window ▸ Expressions, where you can save your own expressions and apply them in any project.
  • OFX plugins can now set, hide, and grey their own controls.
  • Larger OFX suites such as Sapphire now load.
  • Mix and Matte are folded under a Compositing twirl in the effect controls.
  • Effects are in alphabetical order in the menus and the panel. The star only shows on hover or when starred, and the one by the search box filters to favourites.
  • The colour picker keeps the last 8 colours.

Interface

  • Subtle animations on hovers, menus, popups, dialogues, tooltips, and tabs, timed a bit differently per style. Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Motion picks between Full, Minimal, and None.
  • Paper Mono is the new font for timecode and values. Desk keeps IBM Plex.
  • A panel group can be drawn as a stack. Right-click a tab and tick Stacked group.
  • Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Label case picks between the style’s choice, all caps, first letter, and lower case.
  • The status line says what the current tool’s modifier keys do, and tooltips show the shortcut.
  • The command palette lists every menu command, the layers in the current comp, and every setting. Settings search covers every page too.
  • Edit ▸ Undo and Redo name the step, such as “Undo Rename layer”.
  • The small explanation lines under rows in Settings are gone.

Project panel and export

  • Click a column heading in the project panel to sort by it.
  • Replace footage is on every footage item, not just missing ones.
  • Exports show roughly how long is left, and clicking a finished export opens its folder.
  • Greyed out controls in the export dialogue say why in a tooltip.

Smaller things

  • Simplified Chinese has 123 more strings (thanks to @27AAFF), and Brazilian Portuguese has its first 295 (thanks to @CarlosDS6).
  • The Windows install folder is tidier, with the DLLs moved into a lib folder.
  • Clicking a notice lists the last 20.
  • The website has a new home page, and the changelog has an RSS feed.

Fixed

  • On Linux laptops with an Intel and an NVIDIA graphics card, Lumit crashed as soon as something was put in the Timeline. This hasn’t been tried on one of these laptops yet, so please report it if it still happens.
  • RSMB on a precomp or adjustment layer did nothing. The same fixes Echo on a precomp, and any other OFX plugin that reads the frames either side.
  • Exports failed with “AVERROR(-22): Invalid argument” when the file name was typed without an extension.
  • A failed export’s error was cut off after a few words. It now says which step failed, and shows in full on hover.
  • The , and . keys did nothing, they now move the playhead to the previous and next keyframe. K stops playback.
  • Ctrl+D didn’t duplicate the whole selection the way the menu does.
  • Dragging the navigator window zoomed the Timeline out a little on every move.
  • Markers drifted from the pointer when dragged.
  • The Type tool’s box and caret ran past the words.
  • Every tooltip was drawn too far down and right of its control.
  • Every project left a journal folder in the cache that was never removed.
  • OFX plugins wrote ofxTestLog.txt into the install folder.
  • Menu rows and tools for things that aren’t built yet were still shown.
  • The more button drew as an empty box.
  • Studio and Desk drew row lines in an empty comp.
  • In Lantern the Viewer’s pills were clipped at the corners, the playhead clipped the lane area’s corner at the first frame, and the status line had a wide grey shadow under it.
  • The workspace name wasn’t centred in Lantern and Desk.

Before you update

  • Some projects that use specific OFX plugins may revert on updating, this is due to fixing how OFX plugins can update multiple properties based on one control being changed.

Known gaps

  • Shared projects don’t send proxies, files an effect reads such as a LUT, or the results of tracking, roto, and depth analysis.
  • A PSD’s layer styles, adjustment and fill layers, and nested groups aren’t imported yet, and 16 bit is read down to 8.
  • Text has no box text or justification yet, and new text is unkerned until Kerning is set to Metrics.
  • Proxies and the OCIO config aren’t packed into a packed project file.
  • Saved expressions can’t be shared as files yet.
  • RSMB on a precomp still sees no motion from Sequence layers and node graph comps inside it.
  • Lumit can still freeze when importing media on some AMD integrated graphics (#181), this is being looked into.

Thanks very much to everyone who sent in reports, requests, and translations for this release. I hope you enjoy using Lumit!