I am trying to stick a few *.AVI (DivX) clips together to make a full movie...at the moment I am trying to do it with Micro$haft Movie Maker, cos it is on my PC already and free...
Question is, are there any viable alternatives that have more functionality, are faster, and are just as free?
Suggestions pls

MS Movie Maker is a pretty damn good bit of software, you just need to learn how to use it.

But a quick google found this list. So knock yourself out.

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

But a quick google found this list. So knock yourself out.

Lists are one thing, but it wont give me feedback from hands-on use... which is what I am asking for from here

Yep, Movie maker is ok....ish, but I just glued two clips together, used max quality settings...took 47 minutes to do an ~80 min film....and managed to totally screw up the brightness/contrast settings, and put 90% of the film out of sync...really first class if you ask me!

Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas for editing..
StaxRip or VirtualDub for encoding..

All you will ever need

Quote from Bladerunner :

Lists are one thing, but it wont give me feedback from hands-on use... which is what I am asking for from here

Yep, Movie maker is ok....ish, but I just glued two clips together, used max quality settings...took 47 minutes to do an ~80 min film....and managed to totally screw up the brightness/contrast settings, and put 90% of the film out of sync...really first class if you ask me!

Never use the pre-sets, manually set-up the encoder settings and you'll never get that problem.

If you stop looking at it as corporate M$ software and actually use it, it is a solid piece of kit, you just need to take the time out to learn how to use it and to be honest if you can't do that, you really don't want to use anything more complex as you'll only get the same results.

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

MS Movie Maker is a pretty damn good bit of software

Free can not be Good... not from Microsoft, man...

Quote from squidhead :

Free can not be Good... not from Microsoft, man...

If you know how to use it, there's much more you can do with Movie Maker than glue two clips togheter in low quality. I survived using Movie Maker for two years...
But there's nothing better than Adobe After Effects and Vegas anyway I know they are not free.
Well VirtualDub is free (I don't know how to use it BTW) and I like it for rendering my game videos (creating high-quality .avi clips for editing on Vegas, and also for .GIF images).
I never used any other program (as its what he's asking to).

But the list P5YcHoM4N found is very good IMO, you should take a look and try some programs yourself (that's what I do when I need something new).

And you'll need some plugins to make the .AVI working correctly.