Avidemux: A Fantastic Video Editor and Converter for Linux

Avidemux is a great video editing program for Linux. In addition to allowing the user to make simple cuts and edits to a particular video, Avidemux can also reencode, so if you have a video file that you want to put on a portable player such as an Apple iPod or Microsoft Zune, you can do that right from within Avidemux. Using Avidemux is very simple, although a bit of knowledge about codecs, bitrate and formats will come in very handy.

Depending on what libraries you have installed on your computer, Avidemux can read and encode to a large number of formats. It can encode video using the H263 codec, MJPEG, MPEG4, VCD, DVD, SVCD, Xvid4, x264 and many more. Encoding audio can be performed using the LAME mp3 encoder, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP2 or AC3, as well as a couple others. Finally, Avidemux can output your finished video to a handful of formats as well, including AVI, OGM, MPEG, MPEG TS, MPEG PS and MP4.

At the moment, Avidemux works best at editing a single clip. Unlike programs such as Apple's iMovie - which allows the user to import any number of clips to be worked on simultaneously - Avidemux works in a single window. You are certainly able to open up multiple instances of Avidemux and copy/paste between them, but that can become a bit burdensome, and there are other options out there that are better for that purpose.

Because of its video frame-based timeline, Avidemux allows users to perform precise edits. Simply navigate to the first frame you want to remove, and click the green "A" button at the bottom of the window. This tells Avidemux that this frame is the first of your selection. Now navigate to the last frame you wish to remove, and click the green "B" button, telling Avidemux that this frame is that last frame of your selection. You may now copy this selection, via the Edit menu, or simply remove it (also via the Edit menu).