So that's why Lightworks seems so weird, and why it was used to edit a bunch of high-profile features in the early days.

Because it was so different to the way film worked, people weren't really sure if you could use it seriously to edit a big-budget picture.

'It's just like working with film', they said, 'only you can try whatever you want and undo it quickly, save multiple versions easily, see how fades/dissolves look yourself, how exciting.' Avid existed, but Avid didn't really try to imitate film equipment, it was a new beast, and it was strange and took learning to use. Everything about its functionality, terminology, and interface was based on the old film processes of editing, which made it easy for the editors of the early 90s - who had all been trained on actually cutting and splicing reels of film to edit - to transition to digital. Lightworks was popular because it worked very hard at the film metaphor. Lightworks was quite a popular piece of software back in the early 90s, but it was rapidly crushed by Avid, largely due to the fact that Avid is better in every single way. I'm a bit late to this thread, but anyway. Led Zeppelin – The Song Remains the Same (DVD release)Īnd that incomplete list doesn't even get into television shows, commercials, music videos, trade videos, etc that were cut with Lightworks. Here's an incomplete list of just some of the films & TV shows that were cut with Lightworks: Obviously, the original film came out a decade before Lightworks development even started and so would have been edited in analog. Actually, “Raging Bull” is on the list because Lightworks was used to edit the DVD release.

Lightworks user guide