The aim
I want to get as far as I can with a short movie using free applications. I'm also including commonly-bundled software in the free section.

The scenario
I have a short movie, about 5 to 7 minutes long for which I've finished the main shooting, composed, recorded and exported the score, know what I want to do with titles, but I'm stuck at one point.

I want to change the green screen background for moving images.

The Beginning
I used iMovieHD to capture the original footage. That comes bundled with iLife which comes bundled with a lot of the Apple computers. I'm using the previous version, I haven't upgraded to iLife08 which includes iMovie (not sure if it's HD or not - I've read that it isn't, but haven't experienced it first-hand). So it's not free, but I have it and it is a good starter. The restrictions on the software seem sensible, after all Apple do sell Shake and Final Cut/Final Cut Express. I like iLife for the capabilities of the applications. After years on MS Windows, it's refreshing to find useful bundled software. Ok, I use Logic, not Garageband, but at least I knew that and I'm also aware of people happily using Garageband in its own right.

So, I edited the movie using iMovie. It's a short and the simple transitions in iMovie were just the type I needed. I didn't need anything fancy or even to bring in clips and fade/merge across many tracks.

I even used iMovie to put the titles and credits in. First real mistake. Well, second actually, the first mistake was in the lighting when shooting. We'll come to that later.

iMovie doesn't have green-screen chromakeying effects. I didn't really expect it to. One of the attributes of iMovie is that you can install 3rd party plug-ins. I couldn't find one that allowed the background to be a moving image, i.e. one movie in the foreground and another in the background. There are several that allow static images/still photos in the background.

Export from iMovie
I had to export out of iMovie. Fortunately Apple didn't close that part. I've seen some software that only allows export to the purchasable upgrade (e.g. from the bundled application to the more professional, costly application by the same company). The output format largely depended on what application I then wanted to import it into.

You can follow more of the journey over at the showcase preparation article. As mentioned there, I tried ZS4, but couldn't get the whole merged movie to work. The chromakey effect stopped working part way through every time.

Mistakes
I did begin to understand what my first two mistakes were:
1) Didn't pay enough attention to the shadows falling onto the background when shooting the foreground subject. This is more a matter of using better lighting next time, so that shadows, even not distinct ones, are not cast on the background. It means that the chromakey effect has to have a wide tolerance to capture all of the background. Unfortunately to accommodate that, it's almost more likely to blank out some of the foreground as well. Shame.

2) Titles should be applied after any greenscreen effect and most likely, after most effects. Having them applied before greenscreen means that you risk blocking out part of the titles. This may not be major, but if you want your title fonts sharp or in other colours, then there's a risk.

I went back into iMovie and removed the titles. Point to note, remove the transitions and risk changing the length of the movie. I found it easier to keep an eye on the total movie time at the bottom, ensuring that it stayed constant after every change, and instead of removing the transitions, I deleted the words (sometimes entering a blank line) and updated the effect.

Then exported again.

Ubuntu Studio
I downloaded Ubuntu Studio and installed it onto an old P4 desktop with 1Gb. It takes a lot longer to install than standard desktop or server Ubuntu. About 30 minutes of installation, then another 20 minutes updating all the installed files. Doesn't involve you doing much, about 10 key presses or so, plus some mouse moving. Currently on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. AS with most recent Ubuntu versions, all drivers were found first time.

Ubuntu Studio comes with the following applications installed:

Kino looks ok, but somehow sped up the imported .mov file so that instead of over 5 mins long, it ended up being less than 1 minute. Couldn't find any way around that. So I've stopped using that application for the moment. I guess I'd have to convert it into a Kino-friendly format first using other tools. I may revisit this since it's obvious I haven't properly given Kino a fair chance. That said, trying to find out what formats are acceptable hasn't been that easy.

Pitivi is very simple. Similar to iMovie. Couldn't find the complex Interface that's mentioned. May have to search for that. Overall, very simple

CinePaint - can't import from .mov file. Looks well written though. Also think it's for a different job to what I'm looking to do.

StopMotion - not what I want yet

Blender - couldn't import the .mov file. But again, doesn't look to be designed to do what I want to do with it.

Additional applications
I've also installed the following applications. All easy to install, either by a deb package or apt-get install.

Cinelerra looks quite powerful, easier to use than ZS4. Looks the best so far. Chromakey functionality is pretty good. I couldn't get my head around it until I realised that effects were best applied by dragging and dropping. Hint: right click on the track or the effect under it and you can move the item up or down in the sequence. There is a video tutorial that helped me understand about the drag-and-drop.

Lives looks interesting, but doesn't have chromakeying functionality. Does have a plug-in architecture so maybe it will at some point in the future.

Open Movie Editor is yet another application. I couldn't import the .mov file. Will have to see what formats do work. Didn't get any further than that.

As a slight aside, it looks like the long hiatus for Jashaka may be over.

Current Status
I'm writing this while I'm waiting for Cinelerra to finish rendering the movie. It showed 9 hours 20 minutes when I started it. And after an hour, it's still showing over 9 hours. There is the option for using a rendering farm

Thoughts so far
It'd be very easy to waste time trying to get something for free. It's better now than it used to be, especially as the applications often have binaries and often in common repositories. Documentation is still lacking in most and if I pick one I comfortable working with, I feel I should give something back and add to the documentation. Many also have user errors.

To me, it seems that there are too many projects with the project teams spread too thinly. I can imagine a major step forwards will only occur either by some consolidation in the projects or by an serious influx of investment (time and/or money). Otherwise it seems we're destined to get the hand-offs of companies (not that it's always a bad thing) or piecemeal applications that only do limited work. It seems we're a far way behind the commercial applications.