(Review) - Without a doubt, one of the biggest problems that I had when I was transitioning from Windows to Linux was losing immediate access to Adobe Premiere Elements. To the video beginner, it can present a little bit of a learning curve, but for someone like me, it’s irreplaceable. Short of buying an Adobe Premiere, I could not have been happier.

If you have been following our previous articles on OSWeekly.com, you know me well enough to understand that I have no interest in buying a new iMac just to edit my self-created movie content. Therefore, this has left me with a few very limited video editing options.

Kino: It's Cute, But Give Me a Break. Without a doubt, the single most functional video retrieval and editing tool that the Linux desktop has is Kino. For those of you on other OS', I would equate it to Windows Movie maker. A great tool for the video beginner, but their single biggest lacking feature is a clearly defined "draggable" track-based interface for my video project.

If you use Linux and have never edited a video before, then I highly recommend Kino for just putting together some home movies. But if you are working with projects that require a little more detail than what this application can provide, then you are better off with another application. Kino is just not going to cut it.

It LIVES! LIVES looked as if it had a lot of potential, until you try to make heads or tail out of its UI, that is. The application is stable and powerful, but it lacks Kino's usable interface. Even with the program offering a viable track-based interface, it loses my interest as 99 percent of its appeal considering so much of the functionality is dependent on pull down menus.

With that said, if you are willing to spend sometime with a bit of a learning curve, this is a usable application once you make the time investment to relearn how you would want to put a video together.

Buggy is the New Cool. What's sad about Cinelerra is that it is so very close to perfection. The UI is easier to understand than what I found with LIVES. But the downside is that I have tried it over and again on three different boxes and each time the application crashes with the slightest move.

Earlier I mentioned that the UI is better than LIVES. This is true to be sure. But it should also be said that because of the power this application offers, you may find yourself getting lost. There are a number of options that indicate this to be a serious editor, assuming you can get it to run without crashing, of course.

It's Proprietary, But It Works Perfectly. Look, I’m all about my Linux box and supporting open source software whenever it’s functionally possible to do so. Thus far, this does not seem too realistic. To solve this problem, I went on the hunt for an application that would keep me off of my Windows box completely when it comes to video work. After what seemed like exhausting research, I finally located a viable option from the closed source world - MainActor v5.

Before gasping at the price tag, for someone who needs this professionally, this is a drop in the bucket. MainActor is the complete package. It has plenty of options, a fantastic UI and more video effects than I would ever get elsewhere in other Linux applications. Besides that, they do offer a demo so you can get the feel for it before purchasing it.

Another thing that I really dig is that they offer SuSE and Ubuntu packages with the application. MAINConcept apparently understands which way the Linux winds are blowing with regard to gaining the biggest Linux market possible.

At the end of the day, it looks like a proprietary option for my open OS. It's unfortunate that I could not have gone with something else from within the open source world, but I need clarity and power from my apps and frankly, only MainActor is offering me this for Linux at this point.

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