[Discuss] Any decent video editors?

[dbarrett at blazemonger.com (Daniel Barrett)]

I've just tried 3 different Linux video editors to accomplish a simple
task, removing a few segments from an MP4 file. All three programs
failed spectacularly. Any recommendations for a reliable program?

First I tried losslesscut. The UI let me create clips, but when they
were rendered, they were mispositioned by several seconds. Apparently
the program cuts only at "keyframes" and not where you actually
request the cut.

So then I tried vidcutter. The UI let me specify exactly the cuts I
wanted. But I could not export the results to a video file. The save
operation simply didn't do anything. It claimed "FILE SAVED" but no
output file was present anywhere on disk. I tried quitting &
restarting vidcutter, and then it refused to read the project file it
had written, claiming the file had a syntax error.

So then I tried kdenlive. The UI again let me specify exactly the cuts
I wanted. Then kdenlive crashed. I restarted, reloaded the video,
tested it, and exported the clips to an MP4 file. After waiting 23
minutes for the export to complete, the process halted with 15 seconds
left to render. No error. The resulting video file contained 46
minutes of random pixels.

Finally, I tried just plain ffmpeg to extract the clips I wanted:

  ffmpeg -i VIDEO.mp4 -ss $1 -to $2 -c:v copy -c:a copy clip.mp4

Some of the resulting clips had the audio & video out of sync.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thank you.
Dan