[Wiltshire] Peoples' experience with movie-editing, stitching, converting tools... ?

[David Corking]

Simon Iremonger  wrote:

> What other video editing/converting/stitching programs do people
>   out there use on (any OS) ?  What actually works?
>
> I heard there was some very good GPL software for converting
>   videos for display on many portable-players... but thats'
>   not a full editor..

(A) Editing and stitching
==================
I have played with this but not done anything serious (a couple of
home movies to burn to disc and show to grandparents was about the
limit.)  However I was very impressed with 'kino', free software
(GPL?) on Linux, for editing and stitching.

http://www.kinodv.org/

This is a point-and-click package called a "non-linear editor"
(sometimes abbreviated NLE) and is broadly equivalent to the basic
functions of Pinnacle or Ulead Studio.  It works very well with my
"DV" digital video recorder over Firewire, but I don't know if you
need to convert a "*.MOV" movie to an uncompressed format before
feeding it to kino.

However, unlike the non-free Windows and Mac equivalents, Kino did not
have a built-in tool for mixing or dubbing of soundtracks last time I
used it (more than a year ago.)  It also didn't have any built-in toys
for titles, transitions, retouching, DVD menus or special effects (but
some of these features are listed in the current version.)

(B) Conversion
==========

Kino uses only a few formats, so for conversion I have heard good
things about a couple of free command-line tools on Linux, but I
haven't needed to try them:
(1) mjpegtools
(2) gstreamer with ffmpeg

You probably know that several popular video compression and
uncompression libraries have patent problems in some countries, so for
some formats (especially web ones) you have to go elsewhere than your
Linux distribution's normal repository, and possibly pay for patent
licensed software, such as an MPEG GStreamer plugin from
https://shop.fluendo.com/

Hope that helps.
David