While Lightworks has only been available to the general public for a few years, this award-winning editing suite has been used exclusively by professionals from the film industry since the early 1990s. As they are at the forefront of the digital film editing revolution (for example to create animations by a 3D configurator), many of the terms and techniques used throughout the application take into account the tradition of traditional hand-cut films. Lightworks was developed for film industry veterans and extends the inherent linear workflow with additional tools. You will often hear video editing software called non-linear editors (NLEs), which is just an elegant way to say that video clips can be cut, trimmed and taken out of service without compromising the integrity of the source material. It is a redundant term in terms of editing software, since all digital video editors are inherently non-linear. Because Lightworks is so deeply rooted in the history of film editing, the user interface and workflow can be overwhelming for beginners. Lightworks editing can be encouraging even for those familiar with other modern NLEs, but I guarantee you will become a better, more efficient editor once you master the tool. In this introductory lesson we will create our first project and take a little tour of the Lightworks toolset.

Lightworks Video Editor

If you have not already done so, visit www.lwks.com to download and install Lightworks. Open the application and take a close look at the attractive blue interface. Because Lightworks was originally distributed as a turnkey solution for production studios, the interface dominates the entire screen and obscures the underlying operating system. If you want it to look and behave more like a native application, click System Preferences in the lower left corner and set the Full Screen Window to No.

In the System Preferences menu, you can also customize various aspects of the user interface. I prefer a neutral colored working environment, so I’ve changed my window colors to dark gray instead of blue by default.

Before we can start, Lightworks needs to know the name and frame rate of your project. The frame rate is also referred to as fps. It’s very important that you know the frame rate of your video, because Lightworks doesn’t let you mix frame rates. Frame rate is the speed at which a video displays unique, consecutive frames. Imagine Vieos as a series of still images that play back really quickly one after the other, so that it looks like the image is moving, like a page book. Most home movies have an fps of 30 to 60, but you’d only see 24 fps when you make a video. If you have no idea what frame rate your video has, you can select “auto” or open one of your source clips in VLC and click Tools > Codec Information. This will probably tell you that your video has a crazy frame rate such as 29.970030.

Stay calm. Nothing wrong with your video, but the explanation of this unusual frame rate goes beyond the scope of this post. For now, just round up and select the appropriate frame rate in Lightworks. Name your project and then click Create.

Let’s first take a look at our project settings by clicking on the project name in the upper left corner of the application.

Here are some basic details about our project, including the location where all our assets and project files are stored. Although you should never manually change any of the Lightworks project files, it is useful to know that all your projects, edits, and media are organized in folders located in the Lightworks folder under your home directory. The Project Destination folder can only be changed with a Lightworks Pro license.

Go to the Video tab and make sure the output format matches your source material. Our project will be 720p or 29.97fps.

It’s unlikely that you’ll need to edit other project settings, but there are some remarkable sections we should look at while we’re here. The Media tab lists your available storage devices and the location of your media. This menu allows you to move your assets to an external drive to save storage space. Note that this will only move your imported assets. Your project files remain in the default project folder.

The bottom Tasks tab is used to monitor and complete background processes such as importing, exporting, and rendering effects. A drop-down menu for “Rooms” is located to the right of your project title in the upper left corner. You can use rooms as “scenes” of a movie or “episodes” of a series, or you prefer certain layouts when mixing audio, color correction, or editing. You can set up a room for each of these cases. Each room stores the location of all open windows and tools.

The toolbar, located on the left side of the Lightwork Editor, contains several transfers from the editing days of the old tapes. As such, only a few of them are relevant in a digital world, but we’ll go through each one from top to bottom so you know exactly what you’re here for.

  • Record: This tool captures video from a tape-based device, such as a mini DV camcorder.
  • Import: The Import tool is used to capture all your digital assets, including videos, still images, and audio.
  • Create new edits: Opens a new destination monitor with a blank timeline attached.
  • Browse project content: The Project Content Browser finds all your imported media and organizes them into folders known as bins.
  • Search: The search tool is a transfer from Lightworks’ old, bulky asset management system. The revised Project Browser has built-in search functionality, and in fact the search tool simply launches the Project Content Browser.
  • Tape playback and editing: Another transfer from tape-based editing. This is used to export your edit back to a tape-based device.
  • Export edits, clips, and bins. Used not only for exporting edited videos, but can also output complete backups of your project.
  • Editor Settings. Here you can save and restore the layout and location of your open tools. This does not save the location of everything you have opened, but it is useful for cleaning up your workspace. You can also enable global console controls on the screen for video playback and basic editing functions, but I recommend skipping them and focusing on learning keyboard commands.

That should have been it first with our contribution to the topic “Lightworks”. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our experts in our forum.

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