Another OpenShot fan is , technology lecturer at in Mexico. Harvey says, "OpenShot is a video editor which my students can use to easily translate their ideas into creative videos. I have used other FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) video editors, but OpenShot is the most user friendly and offers the best learning curve." Harvey has a doctorate in computer science. He knows a thing or two about computers. (Follow Harvey Alférez on Twitter at )

One of the best things about OpenShot is that it integrates well with two other fabulous open-source programs: the vector-editing program and the animation program. OpenShot uses Inkscape for advanced titling (although the built-in titles in OpenShot are very nice, too.) OpenShot uses Blender for 3D titles. Note: You'll need a very recent version of Blender on your computer to do 3D titles (version 2.5 or later).

Just for kicks, I tried importing some public-domain graphics from into OpenShot, and these graphics imported beautifully into an additional video track in OpenShot. This is one reason why forward-thinking school districts--I'm thinking here of the --can straightforwardly incorporate OpenShot into their

Here's the icing on the cake: OpenShot can easily produce Blu-ray videos (and do so on DVD media), making it suitable for near-professional video production work. As an experiment, I asked Verity and Gersom de Koning-Tan to send me their Scarborough Fair video (one of the videos linked above) in uncompressed format. They used DropBox to send me a 330MB AVI file. I don't have a DVD burner on my Linux laptop, so I transferred this file to my MacBook and used to burn a Blu-ray disc. (I needed to use on this AVI file to create an H.264 file for Toast 11.) This Blu-ray disc, burned on a standard DVD disc, played beautifully in the Blu-ray player in the auditorium at my place of work, the I sent a copy of this Blu-ray disc (in PAL Blu-ray format) to Gersom and Verity, in the Netherlands, and they tell me it played beautifully on a Blu-ray player at a friend's house over there.

Few people know that you can create Blu-ray discs on regular DVD blank media, with the only drawback being the duration of the video. You can probably fit only about 12 to 15 minutes of Blu-ray video on a DVD disc. I learned about creating Blu-ray on DVDs from Becky Waring's excellent PCWorld.com article,