Lightningbeam v1.0.9-alpha

1.0.9-alpha:

Bugfixes:

• Fix audio recording placement: a second recording landed at the wrong spot (and clicking/dragging clips was similarly off) at any tempo other than 60 BPM — recordings now start exactly at the playhead at any tempo
• While recording a second audio clip, the live bar showed as a zero-length clip until you stopped; it now grows as you record
• MIDI clips were drawn with the wrong length (their end grew too fast) at tempos other than 120 BPM
• Recording a MIDI clip didn't mark the project as having unsaved changes, so closing or starting a new file didn't prompt to save
• Audio and MIDI recording can now be undone (and redone)

Lightningbeam v1.0.8-alpha

1.0.8-alpha:

Changes:

• Mobile/touch UI (experimental, testing only — not built or packaged for mobile yet; enabled on desktop with the LB_MOBILE_UI environment variable): work-in-progress phone-friendly interface with a vertical sliding-window pane stack you drag to reveal panes, a new-file intent picker, a selection inspector sheet, a keyboard-primary music surface, a Focus/Patch node editor, long-press context menus, a command palette, and landscape/orientation support
• Text layers: add and edit text with a chosen font; non-bundled fonts are embedded in the project so it renders on machines that lack them
• Animated GIF export (parallel palette encoding)
• Audio tag metadata (title, artist, album, genre, year, track, comment) is written into exports — ID3v2 for MP3, iTunes/MP4 atoms for AAC, Vorbis comments for FLAC, RIFF INFO for WAV — with sensible defaults (year, artist/album remembered between exports)
• Lossy WebP image export, so the quality control now actually applies
• SVG export now includes text layers, as real font-independent glyph outlines
• Crash recovery: the editor autosaves your work to a recovery file in the background and offers to restore it after an unclean shutdown
• Prompt to save unsaved changes before starting a new file, opening another, or quitting
• Faster saves on painting projects: unchanged raster frames are no longer re-encoded every save

Bugfixes:

• FLAC export previously wrote a WAV file with a .flac extension; it now encodes real (compressed) FLAC
• ProRes 422 export always failed; it now encodes 10-bit 4:2:2 correctly
• Fix VP8 video export with audio (muxed into WebM instead of an incompatible container)
• The WebP "Quality" slider had no effect
• Starting a new file now fully resets the audio engine, so instruments and voices from the previous project no longer linger
• Fix oscillator/synth phase drift over long playback

Lightningbeam v1.0.7-alpha

1.0.7-alpha:

Changes:

• HDR video support: PQ/HLG/BT.2020 video is now read correctly (decoded to scene-linear), with a per-document output mode (clip vs highlight rolloff) and 10-bit HDR export (HEVC Main10, PQ or HLG)
• Hardware-accelerated video decode (VAAPI) for both playback and export, including a GPU NV12 preview path; the editor now runs on a shared VAAPI-capable GPU device so decode → composite → encode stay GPU-resident
• SVG import and export for vector layers: export the current frame to .svg, and import .svg as a new vector layer (Ctrl+I)
• Export fit modes: choose Stretch, Letterbox, or Crop when the export resolution's aspect ratio differs from the document (video and image export)
• Videos imported directly and dragged in from the asset library now use the same placement, so they no longer end up with different aspect ratios
• Resizing the document now leaves raster layers untouched; the Info Panel shows the active raster layer's size and a "Layer to document size" button (scale or expand/crop)
• The active raster layer now shows a dashed outline on the canvas
• H.264 export gained a color-range option (Limited/TV or Full/PC)
• Hide/Show Layer now works

Bugfixes:

• Fix sped-up and jerky 4K video playback (frame-index frame cache + request-based seeking)
• Fix washed-out HDR/10-bit video (propagate stream color tags to hardware frames, P010 import)
• Fix the final frame(s) of a clip occasionally failing to render at the end of the stream
• Fix the CPU export color path producing shifted colors on unusual resolutions (BT.709 + honor the chosen range)
• Fix fills occasionally vanishing after a paint-bucket or lasso cut
• Fix silent gaps in exported audio
• Fix black video thumbnails and decoder thrashing
• Fix file-descriptor and GPU-memory leaks on hardware-import error paths
• SVG export now omits hidden layers; SVG import respects gradient opacity
• Fix the macOS/Windows build (hardware export is Linux-only)

Lightningbeam v1.0.6-alpha

1.0.6-alpha:

Changes:

• Hardware-accelerated H.264 video export: each frame is rendered and encoded on the GPU (zero-copy VAAPI), roughly 2x faster, with automatic fallback to software encoding when hardware acceleration isn't available (Linux, Intel/AMD only for now)
• Video export now runs on a background thread, so the UI stays responsive during export
• Grouped and nested video clips now composite on the GPU path
• Video is now packed into and streamed from the .beam project container

Bugfixes:

• Fix an export hang when a video's audio track is shorter than the video
• Fix a sample key-range overlap bug in instruments

Lightningbeam v1.0.5-alpha

1.0.5-alpha:

Changes:

• Add shape tweens (morph vector geometry between keyframes)
• Fix motion tweens for groups and movie clips
• Group geometry and Convert to Movie Clip now work on DCEL vector shapes
• Region/lasso select now cuts the shape and feeds the normal selection, so Group, Convert, Delete and Properties all work from a lasso (hold shift to add to the selection)
• Clip instances now draw on top of a layer's loose shapes
• Add onion skinning for raster and vector layers, with tinted ghosts and settings in the Info Panel
• Images can now fill vector shapes (None / Solid / Gradient / Image fill types)
• Imported images can be placed on the canvas
• Add a raster keyframe timeline UI with explicit keyframe creation; click a keyframe diamond to snap the playhead to it
• Stream audio, video and images to and from the project file instead of holding them in memory, supporting arbitrarily long media
• Persist (and resume) waveforms and video thumbnails in the project file
• Use low-res proxies for fast cold scrubbing of raster frames
• Bound memory use for raster pixels, GPU textures, video frames and decoded images on large projects
• Video export is roughly 4x faster
• Downmix surround video audio to stereo

Bugfixes:

• Fix video export resolution scaling and a post-export UI hang
• Fix gamma handling and improve brush canvas performance
• Fix a save crash on projects with zero or sparse audio
• Fix raster strokes vanishing when committed
• Fix image fill mapping (anchor to the fill's bounding box)
• Fix video thumbnail strip bugs

Lightningbeam v1.0.4-alpha

1.0.4-alpha:

Changes:

• Beats are now the canonical time representation (replacing seconds)
• Tempo can now be non-constant (variable BPM)
• All events now have time references in seconds, measures/beats, and frames
• Add piano roll note snapping
• Snap to beats in measures mode
• Add velocity and modulation editing
• Add pitch bend support
• Add automation inputs for audio graphs
• Add automatable volume and pan controls to default instruments
• Add count-in and metronome
• Add drawing tablet input support
• Set default timeline mode based on activity
• Tweaked automation lane appearance
• Double CPU rendering performance by switching to tiny-skia

Bugfixes:

• Fix MIDI track recording previews
• Fix timeline elements not updating on BPM changes

Lightningbeam v1.0.3-alpha

1.0.3-alpha:

Changes:

• Add gradient support to vector graphics
• Add "frames" timeline mode
• Reduce CPU usage at idle
• Allow group tracks' audio node graphs to be edited

Bugfixes:

• Support Vello CPU fallback on systems with older GPUs

Lightningbeam v1.0.2-alpha

1.0.2-alpha:

Changes:

• All vector shapes on a layer go into a unified shape rather than separate shapes
• Keyboard shortcuts are now user-configurable
• Added webcam support in video editor
• Background can now be transparent
• Video thumbnails are now displayed on the clip
• Virtual keyboard, piano roll and node editor now have a quick switcher
• Add electric guitar preset
• Layers can now be grouped
• Layers can be reordered by dragging
• Added VU meters to audio layers and mix
• Added raster image editing
• Added brush, airbrush, dodge/burn, sponge, pattern stamp, healing brush, clone stamp, blur/sharpen, magic wand and quick select tools
• Added support for MyPaint .myb brushes
• UI now uses CSS styling to support future user styles
• Added image export

Bugfixes:

• Toolbar now only shows tools that can be used on the current layer
• Fix NAM model loading
• Fix menu width and mouse following
• Export dialog now remembers the previous export filename

Lightningbeam v1.0.1-alpha

1.0.1-alpha:

Changes:

• Added real-time amp simulation via NAM
• Added beat mode to the timeline
• Changed shape drawing from making separate shapes to making shapes in the layer using a DCEL graph
• Licensed under GPLv3
• Added snapping for vector editing
• Added organ instrument and vibrato node

Bugfixes:

• Fix preset loading not updating node graph editor
• Fix stroke intersections not splitting strokes
• Fix paint bucket fill not attaching to existing strokes

Lightningbeam v1.0.0-alpha

1.0.0-alpha:

Changes:

• New native GUI built with egui + wgpu (replaces Tauri/web frontend)
• GPU-accelerated canvas with vello rendering
• MIDI input and node-based audio graph improvements
• Factory instrument presets
• Video import and high performance playback