When comparing OpenShot Video Editor vs Lightworks, the Slant community recommends OpenShot Video Editor for most people. In the question“What are the best video editors for Linux?” OpenShot Video Editor is ranked 8th while Lightworks is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose OpenShot Video Editor is:
By using a clean interface that is uncluttered and simple to understand the program allows for intuitiveness that is not always seen in other video editors.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to learn interface
By using a clean interface that is uncluttered and simple to understand the program allows for intuitiveness that is not always seen in other video editors.
Pro Free and open source
Pro GPU rendering
The GPU rendering is said to still be in beta, but works smoothly, even on low end GPU.
Pro Hollywood approved
Lightworks has been used to edit movies such as Wolf of Wall Street, 28 Days Later, Pulp Fiction, The King's Speech and many, many others.
Pro Highly polished editing workflow
Lightworks is very focused on just the editing workflow. It's full of functionality that eases the workflow. For example, media manager can be used to storyboard, "mark and park" can be used in timelines, cut points can be adjusted in 3 ways (end point of a clip without adjusting the start point of a clip that comes before it, start point of a clip without adjusting the endpoint of a clip that comes after it or start and end points of 2 joined clips at the same time) without shortcuts, just intuitively placed mouse hover points around the cut point. Such attention to detail is what makes it an efficient tool for editing.
Cons
Con The GarageBand of video editing
Not a terrible downside, unless you are looking for the latest, fastest, cutting edge production software. It does small things extremely well, but has difficult workarounds for more extreme edits.
Con Timeline only zooms in to eight seconds
Although this is supposedly fixed in the daily builds, it is not out for the public yet, and it can be very frustrating to align and grab clips that are less than eight seconds long.
Con Editing effects is not intuitive at all
Applying effects is as easy as drag and drop. But if you want to edit them, you'd need to right click on each clip and select Properties. You'd need to experiment with not-so-well documented parameters which take forever to preview just to see if you are on the right track. It is sort of easy to learn unless you want more than drag and drop controls.
Con Only simple editing, no compositing such as rotoscoping
Con Free version is limited to 720p output
Whereas the full version can export to a wide variety of formats and resolutions, Lightworks can only export H.264 / MPEG-4 up to 720p.
Con Doesn't support multi-frame rate videos
Unlike the other video editor, this one doesn't support multi-frame rate video.