I installed Windows 7 on an old MacBook Pro, and have been playing with the new Lightworks beta for a couple of days now. Very interesting, and well deserving of a look.

I do most of my work on Avid, and some on FCP. In many ways, LW feels like the anti-FCP, and I mean that in a good way! The emphasis is on fast and efficient cutting, and the editing interface is elegant and wonderfully tactile. Personally I feel that these are really important qualities that have gradually fallen out of fashion in favour of more marketable features (yes I know that makes me sound like an old codger!)

LW is also extremely flexible, and lets you organize and work in any number of ways. It is built on top of a media database that—whilst initially hard to get to grips with—feels really robust and powerful.

But the GUI is extremely idiosyncratic, and reading the manual is probably a good idea. To give you an idea of the level of quirkiness: LW just recently switched from right-clicking to left-clicking as the standard way of interacting with the interface…

Quirks aside, I’m really excited to see LW alive and kicking, and I would love to find a suitable project to really put it through its paces.

(If you do decide to try the beta, make sure you select the Avid or FCP keyboard, unless you’re using the hardware console!)

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  03/29  at  01:13 PM

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Thanks for those comments jok ... I can’t wait to try it out.

Posted by Scott Simmons  on  03/29  at  06:27 PM

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