Lightworks doesn’t have the name recognition of DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, or Premiere Pro, but it has been around for over 30 years and can claim classics of the cinema, such as Pulp Fiction, Road to Perdition, and The King’s Speech among its productions. It’s a perfectly serviceable pro video editor with a clear, pleasant user interface and decent in-app performance. That said, Lightworks falls behind class leaders on rendering speed and modern conveniences, such as AI analysis, auto-captioning, and auto soundtrack fitting. Our Editors’ Choice winner for pro video editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro, and our enthusiast-level pick, CyberLink PowerDirector, include all these features and generally cost less.
Lightworks is available for free, as a subscription, or for a one-time fee. The free tier lets you export only at 720p resolution and includes just basic titles and effects. You can download assets from third-party cloud storage services but not upload to them.
The Create edition ($13.99 per month, $139.99 per year, or $199.99 for a perpetual license) adds 4K exports, audio EQ, more powerful color grading and effects, motion graphics effects, and social media templates. Enthusiasts should opt for this tier since it is in the ballpark of like-minded competitors.
The top Pro account level ($27.99 per month, $279.99 per year, or $419.99 for a perpetual license) introduces support for 8K output, 10-bit video, color scopes, a DAW, more file formats, and plug-ins. It also lets you exchange projects between other video editing software, such as Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve.
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For comparison, the subscription-only Adobe Premiere Pro costs $22.99 per month with an annual commitment. Like Adobe Premiere Pro, you can use a paid Lightworks license only on two computers. But unlike the Adobe system, you can’t swap which computers use those licenses. CyberLink PowerDirector goes for $139.99 (perpetual license) or $74.99 per year, DaVinci Resolve costs $295 to own forever but offers a capable free version, and Final Cut Pro (Mac-only) is $299.99.
The program runs on linux (Ubuntu 20.04, Mint 17, and Fedora 34 or later), macOS (version 10.14 or later), and Windows (version 8 or later). Your machine needs a minimum of 4GB of RAM, a Core i7 CPU, an HD display, DirectX 9 support, and 200MB of disk space. If you use some included NewBlue plug-ins, you need Windows 10 or later or macOS 10.15 or later.
I started with the free version of the program, just to get a taste of the interface and to assess the limitations. Then, I tested the Create plan since it's a more likely choice for hobbyists and let me output to 1080p for my render speed test.
One interesting option during installation is to choose a keyboard layout that other companies (such as Adobe, Apple, Avid, and Blackmagic) use for their video editing software. Alternatively, you can just use Lightworks’ default layout. A 15-minute YouTube video appears in the setup dialog to help you get your bearings with the program. You also see tooltips that explain how to get started the first time you run the app.
Simply choose New Project from the startup window to get going. Here, you give the project a name and add notes. If you pay for the software, you can add metadata. But you don’t choose the resolution or aspect ratio at this point, as you do with many other apps. The project takes on the specs of the first clip in the timeline.
Lightworks has a pleasing interface and lays everything out clearly. You should be able to adjust quickly to it if you have used any other video editing software. However, one thing missing from the interface is the standard set of menu options across the top. I also dislike the interface's lack of clear help options; I'd like more beyond the aforementioned welcome video and sporadic tooltips. The online knowledge base isn’t complete or searchable.
Like most video editing software, Lightworks has three main panels for source media, the preview player, and the timeline (across the bottom). On the right, you see settings and metadata for what you’re working on in the other panels, along with the Export choice (less prominent than in most apps). I like that you can change the relative sizes of the panels with the mouse arrows.
The interface features four tabs for the interface mode based on the main video editing activities: Log (for organizing source media), Edit, VFX (video effects), and Audio. You can choose among several layouts, including Analyse (sic), Assemble, Audio, Compare, and Portrait.
In the left source panel under Project Contents, you can connect third-party cloud storage accounts like Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.
To get clips into a project, drag them from a file window or click the Import Clips button.
After importing videos, you can pre-trim them with blue, diamond-shaped In and Out markers. You can also view them in a larger window by double-clicking them or hitting Source; watching them in full-screen is also an option. The thumbnails don’t scrub as they do in Final Cut and Premiere Pro, however. The Assemble layout shows two preview windows, one for the source and one for the project sequence.
As with most video editing programs, getting clips into the timeline is a simple matter of dragging them from the source panel. Lightworks also shows buttons for either overwriting the current timeline content or appending it, but only from the Source view. You don’t get these insertion options when you have multiple tiles selected in the Project Contents view, and there’s no right-click option for placing clips onto the timeline.
You do get other right-click options when you select multiple clips in Project Contents, however, including “Make Sequence From Selection.” Another option is to create multicam bins (see below).
Lightworks makes excellent use of keyboard shortcuts, in addition to letting you emulate those from other major video editing applications. Undo functionality in Lightworks is limited, though, and might not work for all actions, such as adding clips to a sequence. It at least works for most basic editing functions like clip moving, splitting, and trimming.
Lightworks offers good options for organizing media, including bins. It also supports color labels and tags in metadata. It calls project timelines "sequences," and you can have many of these inside a project. You can also create subclips from longer clips; you can work on the former separately, and they even have distinct metadata. You don’t, however, get some more advanced organization tools like the Roles feature in Final Cut or the Productions (which comprise multiple projects) in Premiere. Lightworks also doesn't analyze media and automatically apply tags based on the presence of people, shakiness, and more.
Search works for clips, audio FX, and video FX but not Transitions. The Log layout is suitable for viewing project assets and metadata.
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Even though you can mark In and Out points in the source panel (using the I and O keyboard shortcuts or markers below the preview), you can naturally trim them on the timeline by dragging their ends. I like that the controls under the preview player are few and clear, though what most apps call the Split tool is the Delete/Cut tool in Lightworks.
Clips snap to their neighbors as you drag them, and you get Slip, Slide, Trim In, and Trim Out editing options. You can also drag clips between tracks. That’s all pretty standard. Track heights, however, are automatic, which can be limiting, and I sometimes found that I couldn’t stretch or shrink the timeline to taste.
Transitions
Lightworks includes a decent selection of transitions, though you don’t get some of the more drastic 3D or seamless transitions of competitors. You can’t apply a default transition to all clip joins at once, as many apps let you do; instead, you need to drag each one separately to the timeline. I like that you can at least use your own material for the transition previews, as shown above.
Lightworks can do plenty, especially with plug-ins. But in terms of native tools for things like motion tracking and masking, it isn't on par with industry leaders (it lacks both of those). You get good color grading tools, though the program lacks a color-matching tool, which can lead to inconsistency in a project (especially those involving multicam effects). You can use keyframing for most effects, which lets you gradually enable and disable them.
Color Grading and Effects
The Color section of Video FX offers standard color correction like (in menu order) Saturation, Gamma, Contrast, Brightness, and Gain. You can restrict effects to shape masks, too. Lightworks lets you add color effects directly to a track or use an effect track that applies the effect to all tracks below it. You can use LUTs, with built-in options for camera color correction. The app doesn't include effect LUTs, though those are widely available in .CUBE format files.
Other Color Presets include B&W options, Dream Glow, Night Time, Sepia, and Instant 70s. The Community Effects panel provides a wide variety of extra creative effects.
Speed Changing
It isn't immediately evident how to change the playback speed of your video, but you can choose to show Speed in the right-click context menu for a clip in the timeline. This pops up a small dialog box where you can set a speed by percentage. A percentage smaller than 100 slows the video down and extends its clip entry on the timeline, while a larger percentage speeds it up. A negative percent reverses the video playback, with a lower negative percentage resulting in reverse slo-mo.
I couldn’t reliably get the speed option to appear after selecting a clip. The software also doesn't give you ramp up and down options or keyframing. It isn't possible to select regions to speed up or slow down unless you split a clip, either. Lightworks doesn't have a clear freeze frame option like that in PowerDirector, either. The latter even has a zoom option for freeze frames.
Chroma Keying
Lightworks has several keying options, including Bluescreen, the standard Chroma Key, Color Mask, Greenscreen, Image Key (lets you overlay a graphic), and Luma Key (a brightness-based key). You simply drag the one you want on top of a clip in the timeline. You get detailed control over the key color, with a dropper and color bars (see above). It worked tolerably well in my testing, though it missed some fine hair. The Remove Spill option was helpful for correcting this, though you don't get the fancy AI subject masking features from competitors.
Transform Effects
The program includes 11 picture-in-picture (PiP) presets in the Transform group under Video FX, including Angle Left and Angle Right, which tilt your video on a 3D plane. You can also use the FX Settings tab’s Framing slider to change the size and position of a track for a PiP effect. Here, you can also crop and rotate the frame. Each of the adjustment groups has a green button that you click to turn off the effect. Alternatively, you can enter a number or use a slider to adjust the strength. The program lets you move a PiP canvas with the mouse cursor, but you can’t resize or rotate in the preview window with on-screen controls as you can with many other video apps.
This is an area of weakness for Lightworks. It doesn't let you import caption files, let alone auto-create captions as most of the big competitors now do. You find text options as the last choice under Video FX—most programs feature it more prominently. By default, with the Create account, I got just three title “components” and 11 lower-third choices.
For titles, you get a full selection of fonts and colors, and you can add a gradient, outline, shadow, and in and out effects, including blur, fade, and typewriter. But it’s not WYSIWYG, meaning you don’t type right in the video preview window, but instead in a text box in the settings panel.
You can create a multicam bin in Lightworks, but the clips need to have the same frame rate. That's something I haven’t run into in other software, but it makes some sense. Since I shot my sample multicam footage on two different devices with different frame rates, I had to create new test footage for the app. You can sync clips using the audio waveform, the current frame, or the timecode. The first option is the easiest for nonprofessionals. But the process of switching angles is less straightforward than for most other multicam-capable software.
The audio tracks have a line that you can drag up and down in combination with the shift key to lower and raise the volume quickly, and you can fly out an Audio Mix panel from an arrow button to the right of the timeline. You can also drag down the end corners of an audio track while holding the shift key to fade it out or in. For easy voiceover recording, look to the microphone icon just below the video preview window.
You also get several audio effects to apply to your project, including Compressor, Equalizer (with a bunch of useful presets), Limiter, Noise Reducer, Reverb, and Sweetener. The noise reduction tool is pretty standard and didn’t do much at the default settings. Cranking up the Threshold slider reduced all background noise but resulted in a distorted, twangy sound. An interesting option is Noise Only, which removes spoken dialog and leaves the background noise intact.
You don’t, however, get any stock background tracks. The best video editing programs, including PowerDirector and Premiere Pro, not only supply background soundtracks with a choice of moods but can even adjust the length of the music to fit your project.
Lightworks simplifies exporting to social media targets, letting you directly connect your online accounts to the program. Unfortunately, you can’t change the frame rate without a Pro account; the first clip you add to a sequence typically determines the resolution and frame rate of your project. You can get around this by creating a blank sequence and choosing the settings before adding clips, however. Another limitation is that you can’t change the bit rate of your exported video without a Pro account.
For testing, I have each program join seven clips of various resolutions ranging from 720p all the way up to 8K. I then apply cross-dissolve transitions between them. I note the time it takes to render the project to 1080p30 with H.264 and 192Kbps audio at a bit rate between 15Mbps and 16Mbps. The output movie is just over 5 minutes in length. I run this test on a Windows 11 PC with a 3.6GHz Intel Core i7-12700K, 16GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.
The inability to change the export bit rate meant that my render speed performance testing of Lightworks wasn’t an entirely fair comparison with the other programs. The test project for this app used only 4.6Mbps, compared with between 15Mbps and 16Mbps for the other products. That didn’t, however, result in faster rendering for Lightworks. It was in the bottom quarter of performers, posting a time of 117 seconds. That's far behind DaVinci Resolve’s mere 27 seconds but faster than Nero Video’s 256 seconds at the other end of the spectrum. Eight of the programs had times under 46 seconds, for reference.
As for general editing performance, I didn't have any problem with the responsiveness of Lightworks. The program did shut down unexpectedly once, but that’s actually not bad for this category of application.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Lightworks)
Lightworks
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
Lightworks is a respectable and well-designed video editing program with keyframe support, but it hasn’t kept up with the competition in terms of features. You don't get AI auto-captioning, motion tracking, or many nifty effects, for instance. Its audio tools and support resources could be better, too. Finally, its prices are well above what's standard in the industry. Premiere Pro and PowerDirector remain our Editors’ Choice winners for pros and hobbyists, respectively, because they offer a more compelling mix of features and superior performance in user-friendly interfaces.
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