Background
I've been trying to use free software for video editing, mainly for editing the background in a green-screen. So far I haven't had much success, best results coming from Cinelerra primarily due it having the best combination of user interface and functional features. Some had better user interfaces, but lacked the specific green screen features I required.

First Attempts
I've been working with another member of Spinneyhead Presents trying Adobe Premiere. At first we tried the ChromaKey effect, but that still left green fringing around the edges of the foreground character. We tried a combination of introducing mattes and using different variables tied to keyframes along the timeline to improve the results of the effect. However it still looked a bit messy.

Greenkey Effect
Somehow, we'd overlooked the Green Key effect. We applied that and it was obviously better than the ChromaKey effect. It still required some manipulation because I hadn't kept a consistent and stable green screen for the background.

Commercial versus Free
Overall Adobe Premiere works out so much better than anything freeware. This is one software area where opensource, freeware and/or community software just isn't able to compete and the best products available for Linux don't appear to be fully opensource either. If you're not careful, anything you do now in a "free" software package may not be useable if support is deprecated. This applies to smaller, licensed products as well. MainActor are discontinuing support after 3 months.

Software like Premiere wins out by being likely to be around in one form or another for a few years. No guarantees; there never are in this game, but a company of that size will exist or be bought out. Either way, support for the software is likely to continue, at least until a transition can be effected.

But more important, the user interface is that much easier to use. You can get a lot more done in 10 minutes with Premiere than you can in 30 minutes with anything of the free applications of that calibre. This is one of the key deciding factors for me. I like the clear presentation, the multiple linked windows and the ability to drag and drop effects as required. Add to that the shuttle facility that is a prerequisite for video-editing (something few of the free applications have) and it becomes a much more useable feature.

I feel like I'm just touching the surface with Premiere and most likely, I am. I am sure there are lots of features that I just haven't seen. But that's testament to how far the community applications have got to go before they can be useable in this area. Many of them such as PiTiVi are very simple and can be learnt in a few minutes. Others are more complex, but nothing yet seems to offer the full feature set of the commercial products. Whereas in many product lines, only a few users use some of the more esoteric functionality in the commercial applications, so a slight under-featured community products can succeed, in this area the features missing are critical to anyone trying to do anything other than basic movie cutting and pasting.

Conclusion
If you value your time, especially if you're paid by the day or hour, then investing in commercial product is a no-brainer. At least this year.

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