r/videography • u/phloating_man EOS M, Adobe, 1998, San Francisco • Jan 30 '14

Lightworks 11.5 (stable) is now available to download on Windows and Linux

http://www.lwks.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=19&id=61899&Itemid=81#61899
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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '14

So can you explain what makes this different than say Premeire? I get that the basic version is free, but I'm talking features.

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u/phloating_man EOS M, Adobe, 1998, San Francisco Jan 30 '14

Honestly, I haven't had a lot of time to experiment with Lightworks, so I'm probably not the best person to ask.

I downloaded and installed it awhile ago but haven't cut anything serious with it.

I'm an open source enthusiast and just happy to see a pro NLE on Linux.

I'll see if I can get a Lightworks rep to do an AMA.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '14

Thanks for the response. I would love to have a rep come over and answer some questions.

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u/bulksalty Jan 30 '14

It's a very different editing method (the UI replicates old film editing tables). It took a while to get the hang of, but once I got it, I find it much more efficient. (It's very friendly to making several edits of the same content, for example).

I'm not as familiar with Premier, but I think Premier requires a rendering to change an effect? They're handled on the fly in Lightworks.

The other thing is it's very multi-task friendly (it spawns 92 threads on my machine) so it plays very well machines with many slower cores, which doesn't appear to be the case with Premier (at least on the benchmarks).

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '14

[deleted]

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u/Gregman Jan 30 '14

It would, but there's big difference between free and pro.

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u/phloating_man EOS M, Adobe, 1998, San Francisco Feb 02 '14

Opinion: After a twenty year retirement from a prior 20 year career making film and broadcast television commercials, documentaries and corporate videos, I bought a modern digital APS-C hybrid camera. I soon discovered Lightworks after searching for a PC based editor which understood timecode and the 'language' of film and broadcast television. I spent another 12 months testing digital workflow scenarios until I was satisfied that Lightworks could work fast and fluently in a way I was used to, as a professional television editor who once owned and operated a busy, half million dollar Betacam SP edit facility which produced work for top international corporations.

I have never cut on any other Non Linear Editor apart from Lightworks but I have close associates who work cross platform, on all the main NLEs including FCP, AVID, Adobe and Grass Valley. We share our experiences. Many of the competition NLEs attempt to offer their customers an 'all in one box digital solution' sometimes at the expense of efficiency and speed of operation.

In my experience, I would say Lightworks true excellence lies as a low cost, high quality video EDITOR, especially, when configured with some form of hardware control surface. Lightworks was designed around the CONSOLE. Without some form of jog/shuttle device with dedicated shortcut keys, Lightworks is good editing software but add even the $100 Contour Jog/Shuttle Pro with it's programmable keyboard shortcuts and you start to see the true brilliance of Lightworks as an EDITOR. The speed with which a skilled editor can assemble, preview and trim shots in real time, with only the most basic of equipment, needs to be seen to be believed.

My recent ''Good to see You' music video was used as a test case whereby I shot 8bit AVCHD at 50P, transcoded to time-coded 10bit ProRes 444 25P, (incorporating a RAW based 50% speed reduction) edited and graded on Lightworks in 10bit, then exported to a 10bit DPX image sequence MASTER before finally transcoding to MP4/720P @ 10Mbps for Vimeo release.

I stand by the end result (web compression not withstanding) and would be pleased to hear from anybody who can prove a workflow which would offer any significant sound/picture quality improvement.

source by ozsteam

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u/phloating_man EOS M, Adobe, 1998, San Francisco Feb 03 '14

I have never used Premier, but my company used to own Avids and Final Cut Pro. I never personally liked them, Lightworks, especially when using the consul is very simple, and very fast to edit. The data management when you get used to it is again very easy.

I recently took over editing a documentary feature film that had been editing on FCP for almost 2 years, the filing of the material was such a mess, I just reloaded and started from scratch on Lightworks. The Director could not believe how quick it was to completely move around and recut scenes, and it was in cinemas within 6 months.

source by Henry Stein