What do Pulp Fiction, Moulin Rouge, Bruce Almighty and The King's Speech have in common? They were all edited using a software suite called Lightworks. It's a very full-featured professional-grade video editing package that runs on both Windows and Mac.
Believe it or not, Lightworks is actually free for non-commercial use, in a version that's almost as powerful as the commercial one. You just have to remember to sign into their website every 7 days in order to keep reactivating your free licence.
To find out more, and to download the software, head to https://www.lwks.com/ and download the standard paid-for installer. It'll keep working in free mode for as long as you like. The download is 80 MB, and it's malware-free according to VirusTotal. And Web of Trust reckons that the site is reputable too.
Lightworks is a very full-featured product and isn't easy to jump straight into. So be sure to check out some tutorials too, which you'll also find on the web site.
Comments
You have to keep re-activating your license every 7 days? That could be more annoying than some guy with a Kahuna burger repeatedly saying WHAT?
A similar freebie is Avid's Media Composer First: www.avid.com/media-composer-first.
As with Lightworks, it requires a powerful computer to do its job in reasonable fashion: avid.force.com/pkb/articles/Compatibility/Media-Composer-First-System-Requirements
Yes, this truly is a wonderful gift to the world.
However, the recommended system specifications will leave many of us out in the cold:
• Intel i7 chipset or faster, fast AMD chipset
• Two high-resolution displays (1920 x1080) or above
• PCI Express graphics card (NVIDIA or ATI) with 1GB or higher
• Separate media and system drives (these can be internal or external as long as the
interface has sufficient speed)
Source: page 4 of the "Installation and Activation Guide": https://www.lwks.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=228