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Add to SafariWhen comparing Lightworks vs Olive Video Editor, the Slant community recommends Olive Video Editor for most people. In the question“What is the best free video editing software?” Olive Video Editor is ranked 4th while Lightworks is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Olive Video Editor is:
This video editor has the ability to move things in the visual space straight in the viewer panel compared to the others where you need to change some value of x or y to scale or move things in your composition. This might not matter much in many cases but if you have a lot of elements moving or scaling throughout your scene, this is the fastest and a much more intuitive method than having to adjust the scale/position values of individual axes separately. This again is a big reason why I prefer an alpha (a damn good alpha) version of this software than a stable release of Kdenlive.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Scale / move elements directly on viewer
This video editor has the ability to move things in the visual space straight in the viewer panel compared to the others where you need to change some value of x or y to scale or move things in your composition. This might not matter much in many cases but if you have a lot of elements moving or scaling throughout your scene, this is the fastest and a much more intuitive method than having to adjust the scale/position values of individual axes separately. This again is a big reason why I prefer an alpha (a damn good alpha) version of this software than a stable release of Kdenlive.
Pro Blazing fast preview
GPU preview means a lot and I honestly cannot understand how other video editors do not have this as the default choice. Incredibly fast previews tested even on low end machines. This is the sole deal breaker for me when it comes to editing clips.
Cons
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.
Con Still in alpha / No stable release yet
Not exactly going to be a long term con. The official website clearly states the same, which is why this piece of software should not be used for important projects. Then again it is so damn good that Olive editor is right now my primary editor for most projects. The fact that there is NO stable version of this software does bother a bit as it's ability to handle complex projects is almost unpredictable. But all said and done, it's still not crashed on me even once. Even though an alpha, the best damn alpha release ever.
