EditShare Lightworks Video Editing Software Review

Benjamin Arango

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Lightworks is one of the most accessed editing tools that is serving professionals from last 25 years. It finds its application in the world of film editing and you can check so many live examples out there in form of LA Confidential, Heat, The Wolf of Wall Street and many more popular Hollywood collections. Recently Lightworks have announced its version 14 and you can expect so many interesting updates with this new release. No matter whether you are curious to impress your friends on social media with adventurous videos or wish to make classic updates just for your YouTube channel with 4K videos; Lightworks can help you to do everything with ease while ensuring stunning results.

The Lightworks version 14 offers so many feature updates that include advancements in user interface, options to perform creative editing on timeline with lots of effects. Users can also enjoy easy access to lots of royalty free video and audio content. It also contains a huge library of Video and Audio FX that are in form of ready to use content. To works with your 4k editing needs, Lightworks 14 offers Lo-Res Proxy type workflow arrangements so you can expect impressive details in each edited frame. There are still so many things to know about Ligthworks so keep reading the review below as it contains all comprehensive details about this feature rich video editing environment.

Pros:

• It offers resolution independent interface.
• There is a built in titler with huge range of audio effects.
• The task focused view offers highly organized workflow.
• It works perfectly over Linux, MacOS and Windows.
• You can access Lightworks as a Free as well as Paid version with lots of incredible features.

Cons:

• You need to spend more time on learning its workflow because there is no source of help.
• The effects and audio mixing abilities are still found to be very restricted.

New Features of Lightworks 14:

There are lots of tricky features added to version 14 of lIghtworks; they have ability to make your work environment more interesting with quality results. As already mentioned, you can enjoy basic editing on free version of Lightworks whereas for gaining access to its advanced tools you have to spend on professional version of this video editing software.

Here are few details about the incredible features of Lightworks 14:

• Developers have made few changes to its user interface. Now you can find a browser layout over there with advanced project search abilities.
• One of the most interesting update is enabled access to the Pond5 media repository that allows users to initiate search over database with their specific needs.
• Now you can also get connected to audio network repository where you can find wide range of audio databases and it is possible to import and play clips with ease.
• The new Cues panel is updated with few new controls and users can now play with the cue marker colours.
• The voice over tool works fine with free version of Lightworks so anyone can enjoy recordings with wide range of audio file formats and frame rates.
• The effects panel offers easy controls to routing, graphs, settings and adding options.
• It is now possible to generate a user defined specific sub category on work platform to have easy access for all most used project details.

Other than this, some of the most interesting additions to version 14 are discussed as below:

1. Simple and Intuitive User Interface:

One of the biggest changes that developers have made to Lightworks platform is its user interface. It has become pretty cool now with task focused design options but the general styles of graphics along with palette are still the same as that of version 12. Ligthworks is continue with its full screen type workflow but the desktop now takes larger space and the scroll bar available on side allows easy access to all projects.

The settings menu on Lightworks timeline is categorised into several project spaces like information, licensing, hardware and user interface. This time you will find Lightworks platform more user friendly as controls are easily accessible. Things are subdivided into four different tabs named as audio, VFX, Edit and Log. Each one of these offer control to specific range of tasks. Here are few details:

Log Tab: It contains four useful tiles named as Pond5, Audio Network, Local files and project contents. The viewers tile in this segment takes upper right portion whereas Cue markers and Metadata reside below it.

Edit View: This option helps to explore settings for timeline editing. You can simply double click on video assets to bring them to the timeline; it also assists in fast thumbnail dragging over video clips.

VFX View: It offers a larger space for effects settings where users can also make adjustments for titles and subtitles.

Audio View: This tool extends support to audio track waveform displays at bottom of the screen while offering easy control to Pan and track level settings.

2. Royalty-Free Audio and Video:

If you want to create an impressive professional level content then the royalty free media can help you to get polished details. The FX library contains wide range of audio and video stocks that users can access to develop classic video clips. The advanced audio-video FX collections assist in effective tuning of all video files and the collection is royalty free. The Pond5 library also contains free 4K and HD stock videos that anyone can access with ease.

Conclusion:

As you already know that Lightworks is currently available in free as well as paid version form so you can easily choose any of these as per your needs. Beginners are advised to go ahead with free version whereas professionals need to pay $14.99/month to avail advanced features with pro.

Benjamin Arango

Benjamin Arango is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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