-MJ

Cinelerra is awesome. It is full featured, the CV version is stable, and I can do anything I want with it. Yes, it’s hard to learn, but the real problem with it is that its workflow and way of working is very rigid. If you can get your brain around that, it’s not limiting. For people who have used Avid or cut film, it’s not that big of a deal. The titler sucks, so I use Inkscape/Blender for those purposes. It’s successor, Lumiera, sounds like it’s on the right path so far.

Kino is a good iMovie type program. As an editing program, it’s too simple for me, so I use it mainly as a DV capture app. Its sister project, DVgrab, does support HDV. Be advised, though, this program is now “complete,” and most of the development focus has moved onto Kdenlive.

Kdenlive is a sensible median between Kino and Cinelerra. The interface is nice, sort of like Premiere Pro, and it integrates well with Gimp & Audacity. Great export defaults, and a great roadmap for the future. I’ve had great times with it in the past, although it doesn’t seem stable at all on 64-bits. Maybe this is taken care of with Ubuntu Hardy; I’m not sure.

Jahshaka promises a lot, and has a nice website, but I’ve never heard of anyone actually doing anything with it besides wasting their time.

Also, Blender’s video sequence editor should be on the list, because it’s better than everything else on that list, except Cinelerra. Big Buck Bunny premieres tonight in Amsterdam, you know.