BookwalterĮditors familiar with native Mac software like Final Cut Pro will have a hard time adjusting to cutting video in the Lightworks timeline. EditShare offers a downloadable demo project to get acquainted, along with a metric ton of tutorial videos, which novice users will definitely want to watch. Tucked away behind a comically tiny gear icon are the Lightworks system settings. Click “Create a new project” to start fresh, or double-click any thumbnail to open an existing project. Tabs at the top allow quick navigation between four different modes: Log for importing and organizing media Edit, which offers a familiar dual-monitor, timeline-based approach to editing VFX for applying real-time filters, transitions, and color grades and Audio, designed for working with sound.Īt launch, editors are greeted with a tiled grid of thumbnails where projects appear as they’re created. The rest of the Lightworks 14 user interface hews closer to what Mac editors have come to expect. Coming from years of experience with native Mac editing software, the transition was a bit jarring to say the least. Likewise, the file browser has a distinctly Unix look and feel that makes macOS seem like a second-class citizen. For starters, there are no menu options at all, and Lightworks shuns Apple’s traditional contextual menu shortcuts in favor of the Windows right-click approach.

Lightworks review