Richard Wilson wrote:
> I am hoping someone in this list can steer me to the right packages...
> My wife recently led a Women's Retreat which was captured to mini-DVD's
> on a Sony HandyCam which saves things in MPEG format.
> 
> I need to pull in the video files and edit out "empty space" and
> (hopefully) get three mini DVD's onto one regular size one.  
> 
> I am able to play the DVD's and copy them, but so far haven't found
> anything that will allow me to edit them.  The HandyCam came with Nero
> Express 6 Software (for XP of course) that does NOT allow editing.  
> 
> I am running Fedora 8, in case it makes any difference.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Richard Wilson

Kino was mentioned and it's a good program now that it is more stable.
But, it edited raw digital video (DV) files.  As far as I know it will
not import MPEGs.

When I already have MPEG files, I use Avidemux to edit them.
(http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/)

The one I am very hopeful about is KDEnlive (http://www.kdenlive.org/)
but I have not found it to be stable enough yet.

After you edit the MPEGs you will need to create a DVD, I assume.  For
that work I prefer QDVDAuthor. (http://qdvdauthor.sourceforge.net/)
It's not too fancy but gets the job done with plenty of DVD menu options
and so on.

I provided the URLs to each program above but you should install them
from the Fedora repositories.  They should all be in there.

Whatever you pick, ask questions here.  Doing video on Linux is
something that is maturing well and rapidly.  It is not yet easy.  I and
others will be happy to help.

Alan