It must be one of the simplest effects out there, but despite playing around with LiVES for several months, I still cannot figure out how to fade in / fade out video clips. There's a handy menu option to fade in/fade out audio, but when converting videos from my digicam, it would be nice to start the video with a 3-5 second fade-in, and a similar fade-out at the end.

Not that it's strictly relevant, but some background info (in case any editors are better suited to the task):
Software environment: Mandriva Linux 2009.1 / GNOME / LiVES 1.0.0-pre1
Raw videos are apparently MJPEG, 30fps, 9110 kb/s, with audio in ULAW format, 172kb/s

I tried asking on Mandrivausers.org about a month ago, but since nobody there's responded yet, I thought I'd cast the net wider...

I haven't used lives yet. Although I did install it on two of my machines. Most of my editing I do in ffmpeg. dvd-slideshow can do that effect and others. Although it takes still images and converts them to dvd video. Perhaps a bridge for the effect and tag onto the front/end of your video. Otherwise ffmpeg can extract frames/images and you can edit those images and convert them back to video. The long way for sure and space needy. But an option. Perhaps scripted somewhere out there in internet land. Although I don't see why lives wouldn't have that effect.

I just toyed with lives. And it looks like you select a frame range, then Effect -> Brightness change -> start == 0 && end == 100. I'm not sure if that clips the entire movie to that segment or not. But it seems to do what you want, if only in preview mode.