What is good software for camera recording under Linux? I use Linux(Mint Linux Petra) and will probably switch to Ubuntu 14 soon.

I need to record video with my camera on my laptop(imagine I use a web-camera for simplification) and I need to see real-time what I am shooting and record the stream.

I tried camera-app and cheese but both fail on my distribution. 

Also, I plan to use external camera for better quality, any suggestions on interfaces, etc.? I prefer to see the stream directly on my laptop screen.
(If you want to know why - it will save me some time while editing.)
I was going to recommend Kino which is the one I used when I needed to do that, but according to their web page the project is no longer mantained, so you can either use it the way it is or try the other software that is recommended on their web page:

Shotcut, Kdenlive, Flowblade, OpenShot, PiTiVi, LiVES, and LightWorks.