Lightworks will sell you its color-coded, function icon-adorned USB Keyboard for $145. But prepare for sticker-shock: at $2800, it’s for true professionals only. It puts hardware function buttons and a jog-shuttle/scrubber wheel under your hand. Tracing back to its Steenbeck film heritage, Lightworks offers a special purpose peripheral console modeled after flatbed ergonomics. If, say, you’re conforming an entire movie to an unusual chromatic universe (think Gattaca, for example), Lightworks looks like it expects you to send your digital inter-negative out to a colorist for final finishing. But for special effects work, you will need to push your sequence beyond Lightworks’ borders. If you’re the type who shades by warping a curve in color-space, this latest version of Lightworks now supports you. Expect a growing catalog of these, but it’s not fully there yet. Lightworks recently signed on to the bandwagon of presets for various looks. Lightworks will suck in almost anything (15 container types and growing), at any resolution, and cut it-without transcoding-right on the timeline.Ĭolor timing is solid, addressing your GPU’s horsepower for fast realization. Drag and drop shots to the timeline and their sound will follow-or not, if you prefer-with PRO’s Audio Linking function.īeyond its filmic heritage, Lightworks PRO has bright potential in the open-source future, where footage can originate anywhere, shot by anyone, on every format. It’s all very Zen.Īudio can follow video as you cut. Simple export or play-out to a real-time recorder. There's just a toolbar to steer your edit by, like Lightworks doesn’t want you to be distracted by anything other than your footage. No “Save!” It stores everything you do, with apparently limitless Undo/Redo. Lightworks’ Project Browser is intentionally minimalist.

Then flip the whole progression to an edit sequence with a tap of your finger. Like blocking a film, Lightworks PRO's Storyboard mode lets you push clip-tiles around to string out scenes. You can bang it like a live switcher, then step in and refine a cut as needed. PRO is also quite fast and facile in Multicam mode: As many sources of as many formats as you could want. Yet it also rocks very advanced trim types. It is simple, straightforward and intuitive.

Adobe lightworks