It wasn't that long ago that it was impossible to find good, free open source tools for working with and viewing video. Now that video runs rampant on the web, though, there are a whole lot of applications worth getting.

In Windows, you have the Windows Movie Maker that makes video editing a breeze. In Linux, while there is no default or inbuilt video editor applications, there are plenty of open source video editing tools that one can consider for their video project.

There’s a good chance that if you’re reading this, you’re familiar with VLC. VLC can do a lot more than basic video playback, including things like video encoding, DVD ripping, volume normalization and more.

This is a guide on how to encode audio / video in which you will find some tips & tricks for using FFmpeg and other tools.

When it comes to video playback on Linux, the premiere choice for video acceleration is currently using VDPAU with its CPU-efficient, GPU-accelerated capabilities that even has no problems playing 1080p video files with extremely low-end hardware.

MEncoder has supported video encoding for a long time with the MPlayer Project and FFmpeg, which also now is part of MPlayer now. Transcode is a new command-line tool on the horizon for video and audio transformations.

My mother is completely deaf without her cochlear implant, so closed captions and subtitles on DVDs are standard fare in our house. However, when I make a home movie, I haven't always had a way to subtitle it for her.

MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), the efficient, open industry standard for video encoding, has made huge strides to become the industry leader in all areas – it plays on mobiles and MP3 players, it's used by HDTV and Blu-ray Discs, and cameras and HD camcorders record in it.

Consider 64 Studio, which packs a whole slew of free and open source multimedia (music and video) content-creation applications such as Ardour, Hydrogen, and JAMin into a 64-bit Debian-derived Linux distribution. The 64-bitness is pretty deliberate: With applications like audio and video creation, having unimpeded access to as much memory as you can is always a good idea.