One of the slickest video editing tools I’ve used in linux is kino. The only problem is that it’s geared towards dv files which comes straight from a camcorder (using the dv format.) Most of my video clips are in mpg format…. so there are ways to get it converted… here’s one such suggestion….
ffmpeg -i some.mpeg -s PAL -r PAL -ar 48000 -ac 2 out.dv
of course, you may want to adjust the format (PAL/NTSC) according to your situation.