video conversion / editing

[Alan McKay]

Hey folks,

So I've found something I really miss from windows, and it won't run
in my VM (though I am going to try messing with VM settings).  Windows
Movie Maker complains within my VM that my video card will not support
it.

Anyway, naturally, I'd much rather do this on Linux.

Some googling got me on Kino - and well it seems really clunky.   It
wants to convert all the AVI files from my camera to .dv, before it
will even touch them.  And this takes a long time.   With windows
movie maker I could drop all my videos onto the storyboard in a
second, and then start editing from there.

I then did some googling thinking maybe I had to convert those AVIs
first to something more Linux friendly.   I hit upon ffmpeg which
seems to do everything under the sun, but of course like many Linux
apps the man page seems to assume I already have a PhD in video file
formats.   I cannot make heads nor tails out of it all.   I've tried a
few things to no avail.

Any pointers out there?

thanks,
-Alan

-- 
“Don't eat anything you've ever seen advertised on TV”
         - Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food"