EDITSHARE LIGHTWORKS PRO 720P
EDITSHARE LIGHTWORKS PRO FULL
EDITSHARE LIGHTWORKS PRO PRO

EDITSHARE LIGHTWORKS PRO PRO

Over my 10 years of experience in a broadcast post production environment, I’ve seen few NLEs that break themselves away from the pack of the big three: Avid Media Composer, Apple Final Cut Pro (7 for those counting at home) and Adobe Premiere. Not many other free NLEs can handle professional formats like Lightworks can. Still, a great value for the price of free, if you ask me.

EDITSHARE LIGHTWORKS PRO 720P

It limits your output to an H.264/MPEG-4 QuickTime at 720p or below, and you can’t render (so if you have any effects, you will need to upgrade). Lightworks Free gives you almost all of the Pro features except for those listed above. So what really is the difference between the paid and free version of Lightworks? Lightworks Pro gives you the ability to pinpoint your exact project location (external drive, folder, networked drive, etc.) advanced project sharing stereoscopic output third-party hardware support (Aja, BlackMagic, Matrox I/O) Timeline rendering Lightworks console support and exporting H.264/MPEG-4 files above 720p, as well as all other export options. There is an important caveat to those prices, however - if you need the ability to import or export Avid DNxHD encoded material then you will need to purchase the DNxHD license for $65, this cannot be purchased on a monthly or yearly basis. If you are an editor that needs to use Lightworks but doesn’t want to commit to a $279.99 investment, you can rent it for pretty cheap and drop it when you are done. I kind of like the pricing model options of being able to buy or “rent” a product.

EDITSHARE LIGHTWORKS PRO FULL

There is also a free version which is packed full of useful features especially if you only need to output a QuickTime at 720p. Lightworks Pro has been aggressively priced as a monthly subscription for $7.99, yearly subscription for $79.99 and outright for $279.99. As of this review, it is also available in beta versions 12.0.i for Windows as well as Linux. Recently, Lightworks ( been doing a free public beta test for its forthcoming version 12.0.i on the Mac (smart idea to let its users do the R&D for them and it seems more and more companies are going this route as well). Lightworks has been around and in use by some for approximately 25 years! For me it’s been that elusive NLE that I’ve occasionally heard about but have never used and have never seen any other editors use (although it’s the tool of choice for Martin Scorsese’s editor Thelma Schoonmaker), so when asked to review it my interest was piqued. Remember that one? It has (quietly) been around for as long as Media Composer, and thanks to Editshare it has been given a new life. There are more NLE choices for editors these days than ever before: Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Autodesk Smoke, Blackmagic Resolve 11, Sony Vegas… and Lightworks.

Editshare lightworks pro