It is an excellent free alternative to Windows Media Center or TiVO. Key software features include:

- Pause, skip, and rewind live TV shows.
- Completely automatic commercial detection and optional skipping.
- Intelligently schedules recordings to avoid conflicts.
- Interfaces with TV listing sources such as XMLTV or PSIP.
- A backend server and frontend client architecture, allowing multiple frontend client machines to be remotely served content from one or more backend servers. A single computer can perform as both the frontend client and the backend server.
- Plays recordings at an accelerated or decelerated rate, adjusting the audio pitch as necessary.
- Controls a set top box using an infrared remote (IR blaster), or firewire.

MythTV main menu

It includes a full feature set of editorial tools, from advanced trimming and media management, to stereoscopic support and realtime effects including multiple secondary colour correctors. Lightworks has an advanced effects pipeline, utilizing the power of your GPU.

With support for up to 2K workflows with realtime effects, it is one of the most advanced editing applications available.

(Screenshot of main editor interface)

(Video demonstration of video editor)

Note: the source code for Lightworks is not yet available, but the software is available for free download and the developers have promised to release the source code by mid 2011. Support for OSX and Linux is also scheduled for 2011.

Through its integration with popular content management systems, it employs an innovative and intuitive interface that allows any website administrator to completely customize the front end media experience for their users without writing any code.

Key features include:

- An open source ( GPL ) and free front end media solution with a built in media player.
- HTML5 content delivery with dynamic Flash fallback for non-standard media.
- A dynamic and integrated YouTube and Vimeo player which the same presentation to users.
- Easily themable media player using jQuery-UI ThemeRoller.
- An advanced, easy to use administrator interface for configuring your media player.
- A simple to install and configure front end media solution.

PiTiVi is a free, intuitive and featureful movie editor for the Linux desktop.

PiTiVi inherits its capabilities for importing and exporting (rendering) media from the GStreamer framework, or plugins for the GStreamer framework.

It supports simple media editing capabilities such as trimming, snapping, splitting and cutting of clips.

Audio mixing is supported by curves, visualised as line segments drawn over an audio waveform.

PiTiVi has the ability to step through a piece of media using scrubbers or keyboard shortcuts. Audio and video clips can be linked together, and treated as a single clip.

Initial support for video mixing (compositing and transitions) has been added in late 2009 but is still under heavy work.

Further Reading & Resources

If you’re an independent film maker looking for cost-effective film production/editing solutions then you should definitely consider reading Lloyd Kaufman and Ashley Wren Collins’ book, Produce Your Own Damn Movie!

You might also want to consider Michael W. Dean’s quintessential $30 Film School: How to write, direct, produce, shoot, edit, distribute, tour with, and sell your own no-budget DIGITAL movie (Power!)

Key features include:

- Support for many video, audio, and image formats (based on FFmpeg)
- Gnome integration (drag and drop support)
Multiple tracks
- Clip resizing, trimming, snapping, and cutting
- Video transitions with real-time previews
- Compositing, image overlays, watermarks
- Title templates, title creation
- SVG friendly, to create and include titles and credits
- Scrolling motion picture credits
- Solid color clips (including alpha compositing)
- Support for Rotoscoping / Image sequences
- Drag and drop timeline
- Frame stepping, key-mappings: J,K, and L keys
- Video encoding (based on FFmpeg)
- Key Frame animation
- Digital zooming of video clips
- Speed changes on clips (slow motion etc.)
- Custom transition lumas and masks
- Re-sizing of clips (frame size)
- Audio mixing and editing
- Presets for key frame animations and layout
- Ken Burns effect (making video by panning over an image)
- Digital video effects, including brightness, gamma, hue, – greyscale, chroma key (bluescreen / greenscreen), and over 20 other video effects

Key features include:

- interface based on KDE’s Oxygen style
- capture from FireWire cameras, webcams and Video4Linux devices
- grab video from your screen (screen capture)
- support for jog shuttle devices
- independent rendering processes
- interactive timeline operations
- high definition editing
- lossless formats and clip organization / location tools

Kdenlive makes use of a number of frameworks to provide a range of audio and video effects and transitions, including MLT, Frei0r effects, SoX and LADSPA.

Video effects include options for masking, blue-screen, distortions, rotations, colour tools, blurring, obscuring and others.

Cinelerra does primarily 3 things: capturing, compositing, and editing audio and video with sample level accuracy. It’s a movie studio in a box.

Cinelerra includes support for very high-fidelity audio and video: it processes audio using 64 bits of precision, and can work in both RGBA and YUVA color spaces, using floating-point and 16-bit integer representations, respectively. It is resolution and frame rate-independent, meaning that it can support video of any speed and size.

Further Reading & Resources

If you’re an independent film maker looking for cost-effective film production/editing solutions then you should definitely consider reading Lloyd Kaufman and Ashley Wren Collins’ book, Produce Your Own Damn Movie!.

You might also want to consider Michael W. Dean’s quintessential $30 Film School: How to write, direct, produce, shoot, edit, distribute, tour with, and sell your own no-budget DIGITAL movie (Power!)

VLMC (VideoLAN Movie Creator) is a cross-platform, non-linear video editing software based on the VLC Media Player

This software is in an early stage of development and a full release is pending. The VLMC website is not up and running yet. There is a github and trac page at the moment.

Further Reading & Resources

If you’re an independent film maker looking for cost-effective film production/editing solutions then you should definitely consider reading Lloyd Kaufman and Ashley Wren Collins’ book, Produce Your Own Damn Movie!

You might also want to consider Michael W. Dean’s quintessential $30 Film School: How to write, direct, produce, shoot, edit, distribute, tour with, and sell your own no-budget DIGITAL movie (Power!).