Lightworks is an intuitive video editing software with many creative effects and real-time collaboration features, as well as advanced chroma keying technology.
Mac editors will find its user interface more familiar, with tabs to quickly switch between four distinct modes – Log, which provides a dual monitor timeline-based approach; Edit; VFX; and Audio.
Easy to use
Lightworks is one of the leading video editing programs available on Windows and Mac, boasting a host of useful tools that are sure to meet any video editing need. While more sophisticated software like Adobe Premiere Pro may provide more features, Lightworks still manages to meet most people’s video editing requirements with its user-friendly design, intuitive toolset, and active forum that provides guidance from fellow videographers.
LightWorks is an outstanding choice for high-quality editing, having made numerous cinematic film moments possible. Used by Hollywood filmmakers themselves and offering free versions to test out before purchasing, LightWorks provides the ideal way to refine your editing techniques before spending money.
An intuitive interface makes its use straightforward, with a project browser, source and program monitors, four workspace tabs at the top of the screen and four workspaces that each offer their own set of tools and options – the Log workspace is for managing media assets; Edit provides tools and options to compose and edit clips; VFX offers effects creation while Audio provides sound quality enhancement.
Lightworks’ Visual FX workspace contains an arsenal of powerful filters designed to produce special effects. From making images more dynamic and adding a halo effect, to changing their tone or making footage appear more vivid or monochromatic – Lightworks offers everything you need.
Lightworks provides many other features that make it a valuable solution for professional and amateur video editors, including support for HDR workflows, an extensive stock music selection, an easy-to-use video editor that lets you upload directly to YouTube and Vimeo, and support for the HEVC codec for high-quality compression – perfect for action cameras such as GoPros or DSLRs.
This program is highly responsive and can run on any PC with at least a 4GHz processor; however, its system requirements can be more stringent than others: at minimum 4GB RAM is needed as well as two high-resolution displays.
Creative effects
Lightworks offers a comprehensive VFX tab, packed with effects designed to add dramatic touches to video projects. Useful effects include sharpening, blurring, glow and vignetting; additionally there are presets designed for specific cameras as well as import of custom LUTs allowing you to achieve specific looks.
Lightworks not only offers visual effects, but it’s also loaded with audio effects. These help enhance the quality of audio in your project while making it more professional – not to mention how user-friendly Lightworks is, making it perfect for beginners!
Lightworks’ user interface conforms to what Mac editors are used to, with four distinct modes for media import and organization; Log, for importing media; Edit, which offers the familiar dual monitor timeline-based editing approach; VFX, which applies real time filters, transitions and effects; and Audio which is specifically for working with sound. Projects may also be divided up into multiple workspaces to facilitate long-form productions.
Lightworks boasts impressive visual effects, yet their shortcomings can be found elsewhere. The node-based effects editor may not be intuitive for everyone and panning cannot be key-framed without extra work on your part – both may seem minor considerations when choosing software for productions, yet should still be kept in mind before selecting software packages.
Another potential drawback of the free version is its limited support of export formats; this could put off serious video editors while it may not affect casual home users as much.
Lightworks is an outstanding video editing software tool despite its imperfections, with simple but powerful VFX features to help create Hollywood-quality films at home. Furthermore, its extensive set of built-in audio and video effects makes it suitable for novice users and its user community provides excellent support.
Real-time collaboration
Lightworks makes collaboration easy for video editors by offering advanced collaboration tools such as multiple workspaces for different stages of editing – rough cutting, fine-tuning and export. In addition, its cloud-based media browser supports various file formats.
Lightworks stands out as an outstanding video editor thanks to its comprehensive editing functions, such as trimming, audio/video FX, color correction and histogram tools. Furthermore, there are various predefined keyboard shortcuts as well as Macros that you can create yourself. Plus its interface can be tailored specifically to meet your personal workflow while supporting multiple languages (Spanish, Russian and Indonesian among them!).
This software supports numerous image formats, making import and export easy. Additionally, it can support multiple camera angles at different frame rates from standard definition to 4K resolution and comes equipped with a color grading tool enabling you to easily adjust tone, shades balance brightness and contrast of videos; you can even convert images into monochrome light effects for a vintage look.
Advanced exporting capabilities enable you to share your finished project in various formats, such as AAF, EDL, OMF QuickTime movie MXF P2 & XDCAM WAV RED R3D Apple ProRes Stereoscopic Media as well as different aspect ratios such as NTSC/PAL projects with ease. Its advanced exporting features also allow for additional functions like adding captions & metadata as well as specifying frame rates of your output videos – perfect for sharing!
Lightworks is an all-inclusive editing tool with exceptional performance, which has quickly become the go-to choice among professional video editors. At its heart lies its patented hardware Console; an intuitive piece of technology which can be controlled with either regular mouse use or dedicated keyboard input; Lightworks also boasts support for AJA, Blackmagic and Matrox I/O hardware devices.
Easy to learn
Lightworks is a non-linear editor long used by film industry veterans. While its learning curve may seem steep at first, once users become acquainted with it they find its rewards highly rewarding. Also dubbed as a non-destructive editor (meaning that clips can be cut, trimmed and spliced together without losing any footage from original footage source), Lightworks makes video editing much simpler and is crucial in video production.
This software offers a range of effects, such as blur, glow, mosaic, posterize, and sharpen. With advanced and intelligent chroma keying technology that makes creating green screen videos simple. Plus its user-friendly interface enables custom keyboard shortcuts and real-time collaboration – plus the program has been optimized for speed on high resolution monitors!
Another advantage of this software is its large royalty-free music library, which can be used for video productions or presentations without the hassle of searching other sites for suitable tunes. Furthermore, this professional video editor supports various video formats – even 4K – making it the ideal solution for complex edits.
Lightworks’ main drawback lies in its limited export quality options. While its free version only allows users to download videos in MPEG-4/H.264 format, while its Pro version provides additional options such as exporting in AVI, OMF, AAF, XDCAM HD/EX, BMCC Broadcast Wave and Web-friendly formats.
If you are new to Lightworks and want to learn the ropes, YouTube provides numerous tutorials that are designed to show you the basics of using it – from file importing and adding music tracks, through trimming and speed alteration, as well as step-by-step guides on using all its features.
Lightworks can be expensive but worth investing in for serious video editors. If you are just a novice looking to speed up videos quickly and affordably, however, there is another solution available that may be easier and cheaper to use.
