Very impressed with Kdenlive

I am using a CVS (mid-development) version of Kdenlive to edit the Hi-5 Carols By Candlelight video and put onto Youtube.

As a video editor, it is performing very nicely. There are one or two parts of the interface that feel a little strange to me, but then video editing interfaces are not a precise art. It does everything I'm asking it to do, which admittedly is very simple, but I can feel that if I asked it to do something more demanding it would still work just as well.

As a video encoding system, it is also very good. It doesn't appear to use the installed Mencoder or Transcode systems; Top is reporting a process named "kdenlive_render". It's possible that this is a rebranded Mencoder/Transcode though, as some of the command-line options look familiar to me. Encoding is fast, the files are small, the estimated time is accurate, and you can edit the command-line options for more flexibility.

I'm loving this. It's an example of open-source at its best.

<n00b>It's not as easy to use as iMovie!</n00b>

No, I guess not; but I'd rather use something that works well and actually lets me make decisions about my movie, than something that is easy to use because it gives you very limited options. iMovie 1 was a pile of shit in this regard; I haven't used subsequent versions but I know the Apple mindset.

I'm not sure if I've told you all, but I'm going to buy some parts and put together my own computer. I'm getting quite psyched about it, and the best thing is that the last two Windows-only tasks (video editing and MP3 player-management) are now completely accomplishable on Linux due to Kdenlive and my Sony Walkman, respectively.