Kino Video Editor
Kino, unlike Blender, is expressly built as a video editor. The developers’ goal in building Kino is to offer “easy and reliable DV editing for the Linux desktop with export to many usable formats” (citation). I think they’ve hit that mark dead on.
Kino’s installation is trivial via yum on Fedore Core (sudo yum install kino). DV capture via IEEE 1394, AKA FireWire, works right out of the box. Kino offers a simplified interface where clips (called “Scenes”) are arranged in a vertical time-line (the “Storyboard”) along the left edge of the screen. Clips are re-ordered via drag and drop. Any clip can be trimmed non-destructively. Effects may be applied to clips and transitions can be made between clips, but these effects are rendered to new files and inserted as new clips rather than being applied in real time. The recent addition of the Superimpose and Titler video filters provide support for titiling and the ability to composite PNG based image sequences over your video. When the timeline is polished to your satisfaction, the export function allows you to write your video back to DV tape over your IEEE 1394 connection, or to create a variety of formats appropriate for VCD, DVD, or web distribution.
However, the simplified approach that makes Kino so responsive and stable also makes some things a little more difficult. Kino has no multitrack video support (aside from the Superimpose video filter). This makes certain editing styles more difficult to accomplish, for instance, in a recent project I needed to cross cut between two cameras that had been running simultaneously while using a sound track that had been recorded via DV tape. Cutting between the cameras using Kino would be an exercise in counting frames. Kino can’t work with a secondary sound track, so in this example the audio output would be cut between the two cameras, same as the video, constantly ping-ponging the audio levels. Finally, Kino presents a relatively sparse set of filters, which in turn limits its ability to create sophisticated visual effects.
In the final analysis, Kino is best suited to simple, straightforward video work. This is entirely consistent with its intended purpose as a consumer grade video editing package.

