Basic video editing / conversion tools?

OK, there are some fancy tools but what are some basic tools for clipping video clips out of large MPG, AVI and MOD files?

Basic abilities like recompressing the file to a higher compression radio and maybe some simple fade in/out tools would be nice.

What are some of the "standards" of such software? (I'm sure many people use such things for YouTube).

While I'm at it, I wouldn't mind hearing about some of the "nicer" software packages for video editing, too; I know of Ulead Video Studio and Adobe Premiere? What else? (But this is a different question from the "basic tools" one)

 

Seems like there should be a FAQ out there somewhere.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to have asked this.

 

hi Stelliger, I think the reason why you had such a meager response to your request might be that it is such a wide field it is very hard to recommend anything in particular as there are programs out there from free to thousands of dollars.
I only play around a little bit with video editing and I use
"VideoReDo" a very basic little beginners program I mainly use to edit out commercials from TV shows that I record on the PC. Cyber Link Power DVD, is another and they also have a special program movie director or something like that just search CyberLink's website.
sorry I can't help you more

 

At http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ they have reviews of video editing software. For video help http://www.videohelp.com/