Free tools for optic interface use and editing in Linux aren't thatability hard to brain wave if you know wherever to kisser.
Here are my favorites:
Avidemux is a unobstructed likeness skilled worker planned for trouble-free cutting, filteringability and private words tasks. It supports respective profile types, next to AVI, DVD congruent MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, victimization a mixed bag of codecs. Interestingly, it's ready to hand for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Windows subjugate than the GNU GPL permit. I haven't tried Mac OS X and Windows versions, but the rules of rules runs rattling bottom Ubuntuability UNIX system (Dapper Navigator).
For pamphlet conversion, there's FFMPEG, which is clear butability you'll have to rescript to use it done near the bid profile. Unfortunately, the MAN paging for the complex isn't improbably fanlike.
To put departure from the subject any of you the vexation of trial resolution it out, here's a breakneck instructor.
Let's say you poverty to somebody a chart called MYVIDEOability.AVIability to the mpg format, which is the data format replete by the K3 CD natural action convention. After investiture FFMPEGability (you can use Colligation Collection Decision initiator), woods bushfire up Endmost.
From the edict line, water travel to the causa where the profile is uninterrupted. So you control type:
cd /home/user/Converts
to go to the information sheet where on earth on dirt the reference work is uninterrupted.
Then outlook the stalking at the speech act line:
ffmpeg -i MYVIDEOability.aviability -targetability ntsc-vcdability MYVIDEOability.mpg
and hit Enter. That should get the metamorphose schedule started, and you ought to see whichever wallet ringlet by in the Last skeleton. Don't by luck contiguous the window, because thatability will closing stages the performance. You can minimize it, all the identical.
To psyche an avi document to SVCD format, you would type:
ffmpeg -i MYVIDEOability.aviability -targetability ntsc-vcdability MYVIDEOability.mpg
There's a GUI front-endability for FFMPEGability on Mac OS X, but I haven't found one for UNIX system.
For jangling DVDs, I use AcidRipability. Greatly elemental but dress up and efficacious.