Lightworks amps up audio features with v22.3

The latest point release from Lightworks majors on audio with a host of new features to make sure the aural side of your edits goes smoothly.

It’s a subject we’ve often banged on about in these pages; visuals are only half the story when it comes to video production. Audio is a key component that is overlooked and undervalued at anyone’s peril, so it’s good to see that Lightworks 22.3 is paying attention to all things aural with some decent new tools and techniques.

Lightworks Pro has always had the top-range tools for professionals — think iZotope noise reduction, AAF transfers to ProTools, and cut / change lists — and now these are being joined by a set of tools that are more aimed at the many new arrivals to non-linear editing that are coming to the software via the Lightworks Create package.

So, new to Lightworks in 22.3 are audio Quick FX templates. These are billed as lightning fast audio adjusters that combine multiple different effects together to make your audio the best it can be. We’re used to this sort of thing in picture manipulation, but not so much in audio and they do a great job of combining a range of tools to enable you to change certain aspects of what you’re working on quickly and easily. Want to enhance dialogue or music? Just pick the appropriate audio adjuster and you’re away.

Of course, while the Quick FX templates are impressive time savers, at times you may want a little more control. As such, each effect can be accessed individually and adjusted to meet pretty much any audio need. New effects include a Noise Reducer; a Compressor to create a more balanced sound that's easy on the ears; Reverb for the essential manipulation of space to take it from loud and echoey to quiet and intimate; and a Graphic EQ to enable you to sculpt individual frequencies to add brightness, clarity, or warmth.

Lastly, and this is really useful for entry level editors, up to 200 free tracks from stock music specialist Epidemic Sound have been included in 22.3. Epidemic Sound has a decent catalogue of royalty free tracks featuring world-class composers, artists, and bands, and with 200 of them you ought to be able to find a mood that fits with your visuals. Most people start to edit against a music track and then find out YouTube will reject it; this is a good way of shortcutting that pain of rejection.

Lightworks reckons this is the biggest audio update to its software it’s ever produced. Who are we to argue? Check out the details, and access some decent demo videos of the way the new features work, here.