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The free tier and your license

Shotwork is free to use, and stays free: marking shots, describing them, cutting reels and exporting them all work without a license. A license adds four things, and a license never loses what it activated.

How it works

Your license is one long line of text, sent to you when you buy one. Shotwork checks it on this computer against a key built into the app. Nothing is sent anywhere, no account is needed, and there is no limit on how many computers you paste it into.

Each license covers one version line. Every 1.x release, including updates, accepts a 1.x license. If a 2.0 ever comes, it is a new purchase, and your 1.x copy keeps working exactly as it was.

Two promises hold for every release:

  • No update takes a feature away from a license that unlocked it.
  • Nothing in the free tier ever moves behind a license later. New paid features may be added; existing ones never move.

What a license adds

Free tier With a license
Overlay templates The built-in lower third, on every reel Your own templates, or none
Reel video Up to 1280x720, with a small "built with Shotwork" mark Any size, without the mark
Timeline export (Final Cut Pro XML and OTIO) Not included Included
The AI assistant Not included Included

The dialog under Help › Your License… lists the same four things while there is no license.

Enter your license

  1. Choose Help › Your License….
  2. Paste the license line into the box, or choose Browse… and open the file it was saved as.
  3. Choose Activate.

The window then names who the license is for and which version line it covers. A license Shotwork cannot use says why, under the box, and nothing changes: paste it again from the message it came in, and if it still fails, reply to that message.

Help › About Shotwork… also names the tier this copy runs as, in its License section.

What this means when you…

  • …move to another computer: paste the same line there. There is nothing to deactivate first.
  • …remove a license: Remove License in the same window goes back to the free tier on this computer. Nothing you made is changed, and the same line works again later.
  • …update Shotwork: every 1.x release accepts a 1.x license, so there is nothing to do.
  • …have an institution license: it is the same license with your organization's name on it, for every computer at that location.
What the file holds

The line starts with SHOTWORK-LICENSE-1. and carries two more parts: your details (name, email, the license type, an organization name, the version line it covers, the date it was issued and an optional updates-through date), then a signature over them. Shotwork verifies the signature with a public key compiled into the app and trusts the details only when it checks out. It keeps the line as license.txt in its app data folder, exactly as pasted. The updates-through date is shown and never enforced.