Pro Video Editing On Linux With Lightworks
A while ago I was using Final Cut Pro X on my MacBook Pro and I was quite happy to have invested in such a great software. OK, so it had been a year that FCPX had been out and for users of FCP7 it was considered as a shame of software from Apple. But yet for newbies, like I was, along with its easiness of getting it through the Apple Store, FCPX was fantastic as a software for video beginners like I was and many, very many, jumped on the wagon of starting editing with a pro tool such as that one.
Yet, when I decided to use Linux Mint as my main box a considerable question of what to use as my main video editor kept pounding. I had tried OpenShot and Cinelerra but the former was either too limited and the latter quite buggy. Other video editors such as Kdenlive was still waiting for me to try (I don’t like to mix KDE software with Gnome) and one day a simple search revealed a fantastic video editor: EditShare’s Lightworks.
As they mention it and as it is, Lightworks is a Professional Non-Linear Video Editor Software available for the three main OSes: OS X, Windows and guess what? Linux!
I had a small video editing job to do last year and I bought a yearly Lightworks license for Linux. At first I wasn’t feeling comfortable using it as the learning curve is a bit steep, mainly due to its highly developed UI, which, as I learned later, was an impediment for a lot of new comers to Lightworks. The UX is very different than most other VEs but once you get the hang of it, you wonder why software isn’t generally built like Lightworks.
EditShare is aware that the ergonomics of Lightworks isn’t quite obvious and puts online a vast array of short tutorials where in less than an hour anybody can get the main hang of Lightworks and start doing basic editing.
Since last September EditShare started to expand Lightworks with such features as 3D LUT support and 4K exports. As I’m writing this a 12.6 version is on its way where they’ll feature further expansion of the software where one will someday expect to use extendable software plugins within Lightworks.
Although very stable and solidly built, the Linux edition can be the least trusted of the versions as Linux as its drivers and libraries can be less stable than on Windows or OS X.
Lightworks stands mainly as THE professional grade video editing tool for Linux for the moment. Although less complete than Adobe’s Premier and missing a serious companion like After Effects, Lightworks does a fine job of editing at a very reasonable price.
Visit http://www.lwks.com for more information on EditShare’s Lightworks.