Capabilities of these NLEs?

[the Black Monarch]

I'm currently looking for a free NLE for Windows with abilities that are somewhat more flexible than the likes of WMM (translation: software that lets me do the clipping, instead of doing it for me, and allows frame-accuracy). Wikipedians have a very questionable idea of what "non-linear" means, so I'd like to know which of the following are actually NLEs, and what their capabilities and limitations are:

Clesh
Jahshaka
Mewa
Videospin
Videothang
Wax
Vivia
Zwei Stein

(I'm just not in the mood right now to backup my data, nuke my hard drive, and reinstall the free 30-day trial of Premiere Pro.)

[DeinReich]

As far as I know, Jashaka isn't even in a stable state as of yet. When I tried installing it to take a look for myself, it wouldn't even open. I checked the page and it didn't look like it was going to be in good working condition for a while. The SourceForge page says it hasn't been updated since 2006.

I also played a little with Zwei Stein, but not enough to remember how it was.

[the Black Monarch]

Okay, in the past few hours, I've had the chance to try Mewa, ZS4 (Zwei Stein 4), and something called ABC Videoroll. Mewa is just a slideshow-maker, and Zwei Stein 4 is a lot like a screencap of a nonlinear editor - you can look at it and click on parts of it, but it doesn't actually do anything because nothing is actually there. ABC Videoroll has something that could be loosely described as functionality; however, as I went through the tutorial, half of the things that should have happened (according to the tutorial) didn't. This lasted for about 3 or 4 minutes before the program crashed and took my taskbar with it, forcing me to reboot.

Hooray for open-source

[the Black Monarch]

Vivia is still in alpha stage - version 0.1.1, they say.

Videospin looks promising, though downloading is somewhat problematic because the connection keeps getting reset.

[the Black Monarch]

Grr. Videospin is just WMM with a better skin and the ability to export as something other than Windows Media. They both have the same nightmarish issues with frame-accuracy, Spontaneous Clip Migration Syndrome, inability to set a timebase, blah blah blah... they are literally different names for the same program.

[JaddziaDax]

perhaps buying a nle might be better?

[gotenks794]

Premiere Elements is only like $150. It is the holiday season, you know.

[gotenks794]

EDIT: Wait a sec... you donated $1500 to the org and you don't have an NLE other than WMM?!

[the Black Monarch]

It would be more accurate to say that I am fond of nuking my hard drive and reinstalling Windows every so often, and thus, the 30-day trial version of Premiere has had a funny habit of lasting a lot longer than 30 days

Speaking of which, I did exactly that earlier today, so the point is moot. My "Happy Tree Friends"/"Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" video is coming along nicely. I'm still nonetheless curious as to whether or not something of a higher caliber than WMM/iMovie/Videospin is available on the Windows platform without money or BitTorrent being involved.

[Zarxrax]

There are no good and free video editing applications.

An up and coming app that looks VERY promising though, is Saya Video Editor: http://sayavideoeditor.sourceforge.net/

It's still VERY early in development though, but there are actually people working on it. They could definitely use more programmers though.