Edit Video for Free

WOULD YOU LIKE to use the same video-editing software as your favorite film-makers? Lightworks has been used on PulpFiction,Heat,TheWolfofWallStreet, and many more—and you can use it for your own videos, too.

The core app is free, but if you’re a pro, you’ll want to shell out for extra tools and the highest resolution exporting; for most of us, though, free is just great. The app contains everything you need to edit movies and export to common file formats and services such as YouTube.

Before you decide to make StarWars in the shed, a word of warning: Video editing is very demanding on your PC, so it might be wise to keep things simple while you’re learning the ropes. And don’t let other programs run when you’re editing video—your app needs as much power as your PC can give it.

1 CREATE A NEW PROJECT When you launch Lightworks, you’re taken to the “Local Projects” screen. Once you’ve worked on some projects, the various rectangles are replaced by their titles and thumbnails, but to begin with, everything is empty. The app doesn’t have the familiar Windows menu bar—for example, the settings bit is accessed by the gears icon in the top-right corner. Click “Create New Project” and you’ll see the “New Project Details” pop-up. You need to give your project a title, and the app also asks you to choose a frame rate—this is how many frames per second the video will be. If you don’t have a specific one in mind, just stick with the “Auto” option. If you wish, you can also add quick notes in the text field to describe your project.

2 FIND YOUR FILES If you’re new to Lightworks, it provides on-screen tips, but you can turn them off. The Log view is where you locate and organize the source material for your project: your video clips and your audio tracks. When you’re working on a new project, the “Project Contents” bit is blank. Click “Local Files” to browse to and import the video clips that you want to use. One of the key reasons for choosing Lightworks is that, unlike many video editors, it doesn’t just work with one or two video file formats; it can import pretty much anything, which is a real boon if you’re pulling in video from compact cameras or some smartphones. Simply browse to the folder containing your video, and select the clip(s) you plan to use.

3 IMPORT THE CLIPS It’s not immediately obvious, but the videos in your “Local Files” panel aren’t added to your project until you import them. To do that, select them, then click the “Import” button in the lower left-hand corner [ Image A]. This can sometimes make your PC look as though it’s crashed, especially on lower-powered PCs, but be patient—the process can take a few minutes, especially with long, hi-res video. You’ll now see a three-panel view: clips in the top-left, preview at the top-right, and the project timeline at the bottom. Don’t worry if you don’t have any videos of your own to edit—you can do what we’ve done here, and download royalty-free videos from www.pexels.com.

These videos are available for you to use anywhere for free, including commercial use.

4 INSERT YOUR FIRST CLIP To make your video, you need to put the component parts on the timeline. It’s a little like Lego for video: You put one clip here, then another one alongside it, and another after that. Drag your first clip to the very beginning of the timeline. You’ll see that Lightworks shows three things, not one, here: The bit on the V1 row is the video, while A1 and A2 are its left and right audio tracks [ Image B].

5 ADD ANOTHER Most video projects are made of multiple clips joined together. Drag your second clip on to the timeline, just after the first one ends. When you get very close, it snaps to the end of the first clip, so there’s no gap. Once again, we have three tracks here: one video and two audio. Lightworks color-codes each of your clips, so it’s easy to see which one’s which.

6 ADD A TRANSITION Unless you’re doing it for deliberate effect, it’s generally a bad idea to move between very

different clips without some sort of transition, such as a fade or a wipe. To add a transition between clips, right-click the bit where the two clips meet each other, and you’ll see the “Sequence” pop-up. Select “Transitions > Add,” and choose the one you want. You can adjust its settings here, too.

7 ADD VIDEO WITHOUT AUDIO So far, all of our video clips have included their own audio, but sometimes your video will come without any audio at all. As you can see, two of the three clips here don’t have audio tracks [ Image C]. You can easily add audio by importing it and dragging it to the timeline, or you can click the microphone icon immediately below the preview (it’s in the strip of small icons) to record a voice-over.

8 TRIM YOUR CLIPS Trimming a clip gets rid of the beginning or end of it. To trim clips in Lightworks, right-click over the clip you want to trim, and you’ll see the “Segment Commands” options. “Trim In” enables you to grab the edge and pull it in to get rid of bits you don’t want without affecting other clips. Use “Slip” and “Slide” if you want to adjust where one clip ends and another begins.

9 ADD EFFECTS If you click the “VFX” tab, you can do some interesting things to your video. The first time you click the tab, you’re taken to the color correction screen. You can do two common tasks here: You can adjust the colors in a clip so it looks more natural or blends better with the rest of your project, or you can make more dramatic changes to its color. This is an extreme example of what happens when you change video settings [ Image D]— we’ve whacked the brightness right down to give a more dramatic effect on our sunrise. Like any kind of filtering, unless you’re turning everything up to 11 for artistic reasons, it’s usually best to do as little as possible when you color correct; too much can make your footage look distinctly odd.

10 ADD YOUR TITLES If you look closely above the color correction header, you’ll see a little “+” sign. This is where you can add items such as scrolling titles or the video IDs you get on music video channels and YouTube clips. You can also get it by right-clicking a video clip in the V1 track and choosing “Edit > Effects > Add > Titles.” We’ve gone for StarWars- style text that rolls up the screen [ Image E].

11 CHANGE THE TEXT Your title settings appear in a new section underneath the “Color Correction” bit of the “VFX” window; scroll down to see all of it. Simply replace the sample text with whatever you want to see. You can also adjust the typeface size and opacity, its positioning, and its shadow or outline. Those two are particularly handy where the video moves from dark to light or vice versa.

12 ADJUST THE AUDIO Click the “Audio” tab to add equalization or crossfades to your sound. There are some presets for reducing background noise, or you can roll your own, too. Adjust volume levels by dragging the blue arrows on the sound meters at the top-right [ Image F].

To export your project, simply return to the “Edit” screen, right-click the timeline, and select “Sequence Commands > Export.”