by Kay Andrews

Created on: July 27, 2008

If you are serious about video editing, buy a mac. Frankly it is hard to compete with iMovie on the consumer end and Final Cut Express for enthusiasts and Final Cut Pro for professionals. They are the defacto standard for small shops and individuals. However, if you insist on editing under Linux there are a few applications available for the task.

Option #1: Cinelerra http://cinelerra.org/

Cinelerra is free and opensource and is aimed more at enthusiasts as well as professionals on a tight budget. It is the most mature and stable of the Linux video editors. There are pre-compiled binaries for a variety of distros, including the popular Ubuntu, Fedora, and SuSE flavors. You can even download Musix, http://musix.org.ar/, which is a live CD which allows you to try the program without having to install linux on your machine. You simply burn the CD and boot up your existing computer from the CD-Rom Drive. This project also shares about 8 years of development making it by far the most mature video editing application on the market for Linux users.

Now the down side is that Cinelerra may have issues with downloading video from your DV Camera unless it has Linux driver support. Also, while the program is stable, it is not any where near as stable as commercial applications. So crashes and bugs are more prevalent than in similar commercial applications for Windows of Mac.

Option #2: http://lives.sourceforge.net/

Lives is another application that has fewer features that cinelerra, but is acceptable for those wishing to edit home movies and even some enthusiasts. It is also a very lightweight editing solution, so if you are running on a slower computer, it may be your best choice. LiVES will compile and run under BSD and Mac OSX (Intel) as well as Linux.

The down sides is that it does not come in a pre-compiled binary. So you have to be a bit of geek and know how to install and compile code from source.

Option #3: Blender 3d http://www.blender3d.org

Blender 3d is more of a 3d modeling and animation program, but it does contain a substantial video editing tool kit. Like Cinelerra, it is free, opensource, and runs on Linux. However, it's down side is that the interface can take a bit of getting used to, especially since it is a 3D animation package that happens to have video editing abilities. Blender also runs on Windows, Mac, Solaris, and FreeBSD in additional to Linux.

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