For over 2 decades, Lightworks has been a forerunner in video editing. Having been used on many cinematic masterpieces like The Wolf of Wall Street, LA Confidential, Pulp Fiction, Heat, Road to Perdition, Hugo, The King’s Speech, and many more – Lightworks outshines in the arsenal of video editing tools. It packs a complete creative package for optimizing video content; it can be used by both beginning videographers involved in the social media world and expert filmmakers.
So, whether you need to make short video clips for social media or a high-definition one for a film project, Lightworks lets you edit like a pro and unleash your creative potential for all to see.
Lightworks video creation software for PC
Lightworks Free is a video editing solution packed with amazing features and robust tools. It can be used to make videos for social media, YouTube, Vimeo, and film projects. This powerful editing suite will help you produce striking videos, and the best part – It is free for home users.
It has a simple and intuitive interface that will allow you to edit and create videos with amazing content. You will be able to easily edit shots or clips by applying the drag and drop techniques provided by the software. Also, it allows the enhancement of the images in the videos with color grading and blending options. Lightworks also allows the users to perform keyframing as they add effects to their videos, which helps create smooth shifts between clips. The software provides many tutorials and its free version meets all these requirements very well.
Lightworks Free features
Lightworks is loaded with incredible features, here’s a quick rundown:
- Supports all major operating systems i.e., Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X
- Extensive support for file formats (including variable frame rate media)
- Access to incredible royalty-free audio and video content
- Fast precision editing
- Simple, intuitive, and customizable user interface
- Video export for YouTube/Vimeo, SD/HD
- Adobe After Effects plugin support
- Branded consoles and keyboards support
- Free tutorials.
User Experience
You can download the Lightworks software from lwks.com, but you will not be able to download the software directly as it demands registration. Be sure you fill all the compulsory fields, once done submit the registration, and activate your account with the link sent to your email. You will be able to download the software once you log in with your credentials on the website.
After downloading the software, install the same on your system.
Lightworks is great for both complex video editing and simple tasks and has all the necessary tools for it. The interface of the software brings out its professional roots and clearly parades that it is not a mere video editing tool.
You can begin by creating a project and setting a frame rate for the final video output.
Lightworks allows you to record video directly from the system camera, and also import existing clips both in audio and video formats. Once you got all your resources ready you can start creating your first cut.
The main benefits of the Lightworks software are the easy drag-and-drop technique, and it has a user interface comprising of panels like bins, timeline, and edit review; hence, it is very easy to understand this technique on the software. Bins are where your video clips are imported and the edit review shows the clips that you have currently been working on. Importing your collection to this software is incredibly easy.
Lightworks has a right-click menu that allows the users to export videos to YouTube. Users can right-click a video from the edit viewers, bin, or timeline and export it to YouTube. While exporting, users can access other options such as frame rate, size selection, as well as adding meta tags for easy web searching.
Lightworks’ advanced real-time effects help you perfect your video, including color correction, blurs, and masks. There are dozens of preset effects, you can even create your own manually. Furthermore, plug-ins make the working process more convenient, these expand the functionalities even further.
BorisFX is one of the most commonly used Plug-in with Lightworks. This excellent FX plugin works with Lightworks on both Windows 64bit and Mac OS X; it offers a library browser with hundreds of preset animations, unlimited layers of media with a resolution-independent, non-destructive vector paint system, and much more!
This was just about few basic functionalities, it may look intimidating at first, but is surprisingly intuitive once you’ve spent some time experimenting.
The downside of the free version
Lightworks video editor is available in 2 versions, Lightworks Free and the full-featured Lightworks Pro program. The main downside of the free version is it offers limited export resolution and format features. So, the only way you can save a video is to export it directly to YouTube or Vimeo. Also, it maxes out at 720p, and only in MPEG4/H.264. The export feature limitation makes this free version of Lightworks too limited for those who are serious video editing enthusiasts. If you have a Vimeo or YouTube channel, it should be enough for you.
Final words
Lightworks Free is a great alternative to popular video editing tools. It’s ease-of-use, lightweight, and versatility sets it apart from other competitors. Its free version doesn’t have everything the pro version offers, but if you are a beginner or a social enthusiast you can always get similar results with it.
