Need help searching alternative to Windows Movie Maker?

[Parove]

I need help editing home movies. I want to cut them up into smaller scenes and add transition, text, etc. but I don't want to use Windows Movie Maker since I rather save the movie in AVI, MKV, MPEG, or even Quicktime formats. I have tried to use Avidemux and VirtualDub, but these don't have a similar layout/format to Windows Movie Maker. It's very easy to do what I want in WMM but I don't like using it. Is there a program either open-source, freeware, or propriety that has a similar look or features as WMM and allows the output to be saved in different formats?

P.S. I've search some of the forum and "help" sections, but almost everything points to avidemux and VirtualDub.
P.S.S. I prefer open-source software.

[guns1inger]

No 'real' editor is going to output to MKV, and even those that do output to AVI may not like Divx or Xvid a lot either. Basically there are no decent freeware editors that do what you want for Windows. There are couple in the Linux world, but I can't vouch for their capabilities. If you want something to edit with, look at VideoStudio or one of the entry level big boys, such as Premiere Elements or Vegas Movie Studio. After you have edited your video you can use something like Xvid4PSP to repacke the contents to mkv or similar.

[Parove]

Thanks for replying. I actually do have Linux installed on my old PC which for some unexplained reason stopped loading Windows and new DVD discs would caused it to restart. I'm good with hardware so I changed everything other than the CPU/Motherboard which was still working, and I couldn't resolve the issues so I installed many different Linux and other open source OSes. I haven't experimented much on Linux because I found it hard to install new programs with the command line. Anyway, I am also interested to learn about those Linux based movie editing software.

I have Ubuntu with the gnome desktop. The latest version installed.

[guns1inger]

You should not have to install most apps with the command line under ubuntu. The bulk of it will come through the GUI package installer. Have a look at the contents of the unvbuntu studio variant. It will have severall video tools pre-bundled, all of which should work on standard ubuntu. Then check your package manager and install the ones you want to try out.

[FaB4FaN]

Can NE1 help me find a program that would eliminate the need to have several programs . . . .?
I am looking for something that would let you convert AVI to DVD,crop,enhance brightness,colors,and burn to disc, as well as shrink to a standard 4.7 if it is larger.

I'm tryin to alleviate the need to use 1 prgm. to crack protection like DVDdecrypter, another to shrink like DVDShrink, another to convert if using AVI like ConvertXtoDVD.

All help would be appreciated.

[redwudz]

FaB4FaN, you're not going to find one program to do it all. Nero is one failed attempt to do some of that. If you value quality at all, you will find it takes several programs to do the common operations with videos.

Spammeo, I assume you are aware that WMM can also output DV-AVI format? It's fairly low loss and easy to use for further editing, filtering and encoding.