Lightworks. One word – Very cool (yes that’s two words…). The time has come for me to at least temporarily rethink some video tools and what could be more affordable than free? I’d seen some info about this tool coming for some time over the past year and finally got around to getting it up and running today. Good stuff…
Keeping in mind, I spent maybe a whole hour in it, I can give a few quick impressions of it so far…

1. First off, it feels very sturdy. Previous experience with open source stuff has always been hit or miss. In Lightworks I didn’t even feel an inkling that something wanted to crash at any point.
2. VERY different. I think in the long run this will be good, because I can already see how it’s crafted to a certain kind of workflow, but this feels nothing like Premiere, Vegas or even Final Cut Pro…
3. Tools – lots… Well, for a free piece of software. You’ve got all the basic effects you could want, and in particular, the color correcting stuff looks pretty detailed.
4. Formats – Pulled in raw video from the Canon60D with no hiccups. It appears to deal with most HD video formats pretty well. My quick install didn’t seem to have all the listed export options, but I’m guessing a quick google search or some forum browsing would rectify that.
5. Runs on an average machine – Got it working smoothly on this 3+ year old laptop with no problems…
6. Shark – Yea, there’s a tool tip thing ala Microsofts’ dreaded paper-clip.. But it’s a shark, so at least there’s that…

All in all, I’m excited to explore this more and will surely have an update once I get rolling with the Canon60D and really shoot something worth showing (so far no amount of editing will help video footage of shoes and boxes and the other various things in this room I’ve shot to just get used to the camera – but that’s for another post…)

Grab the beta ‘here‘…