Video Editing Software Help

If you're looking just to convert video files, that you need less of a video editor and more of a video converter. I downloaded something called "Any Video Converter" which does a decent job at turning one video file into another. (Granted, high quality stuff doesn't come out looking as good, but for just standard web videos, it's fine.) RealPlayer also has some decent audio / video file converters, but I have problems with it loading sometimes.

For actual video editing, I don't know of any free software that would beat up Windows Movie Maker. (Which, in my experience, does a decent job at pulling together clips but sucks cause it only exports into WMVs.) I used Final Cut at school, but that's high class stuff and super pricey. I once purchased Adobe Premier Elements, which knocks WLMM out of the water, but that's still $100 software.

If you're just converting files, look for a good video converter. There seem to be plenty of free ones out. If you want to still do some video editing... well, use the converter to change video files into ones that can be used in WLMM. That would be my suggestion.

Well I also need to compile the clips into a single video, as FRAPS splits them in its recording. WLMM has worked fine before, but now when I export the final video it's at half size, with a big black border around it

My friend says he uses Sony Movie Studio, so I may look into that, but I don't know if I want to spend $45 on it.

EDIT: I found my problem: WLMM was set to 4:3 by default, so it would save the video in 4:3. I changed it to 16:9 and it worked fine. Thanks for your help anyway.

Looks like you've got it all sorted out, but VirtualDub is a pretty powerful free option for working with AVI files as well.

I tried VirtualDub but it was a pain to work with. Even if WLMM sucks, it's very straightforward.