Looking at quality of videos, resolution, smooth flow, effects, and ease of use, but especially the quality from the end viewer's view, which software is the best for editing/producing videos?

You can take a look at Avidemux. It has a friendly graphical interface and plenty of useful hints and documentation on the Avidemux Wiki.

A new project to keep an eye on is a VLC based video editor: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/it...te-892221.html

You may find some howto's on using Blender3D for video editors. It may be the most difficult to use but most powerful for editing and compositing.

Also look at Kdenlive. It has virtual box images you can download and try at no risk.

There aren't a ton of video editors available. Perhaps your question should be what video editors are available, and make the determination of which is best for your needs yourself.

Avidemux is probably the standard bearer right now. Kino, Lives, Pitivi are runners up and seem more for clips. And these are only the tip of the iceberg.

Most use standard codec libraries so resolution, quality of videos and such things are (or can be) pretty much the same.

The big issue is trying to figure out what you want to do. If your needs are focused, then you have a greater chance of finding something that it set up for what you want to do. If you need something more general purpose, then you are going to get into containers, codecs, and all sorts of other options. Fortunately, most of the gp editors (e.g. avidemux) have presets to handle common options for various tasks.

Then there's the rippers and transcoders like HandBrake or K9Copy and DVD creators like DeVeDe and players like VLC that will do so much more than just put it on the screen.

Tough choices and many options, so many options - not enough time ...