Spin waves are the excitations of a magnetically order.ed solid state material.In mag netic films they have unusual dispersiou properties compared to electromagnetic waves and allow the realization of novel experiments in the field of linear and nonlinear propa gation and manipulation.The experimental technique of space-, time-and phase resolved Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy is a powerful, versatile tool to investigate spin-wave properties.I will give an introduction into the basic phenomena of spin wave propagation in magnetic films and into fundamental experiments.In the field of nonlinear spin-wave optics I will discuss new experiments on solitons and so-called bullets, the two-dimensional counterparts of solitons, which both are eigen (i)nodes of the respective systems.In analogy to well-known experiments in the field of photon optics I will present experiments ad dressing caustic effects appearing upon collapse of spin-wave modes, spin waves travelling in magnetic stripes on the sub-micrometer scale, radiation of spin waves and damping mechanisms at nanocontacts, as well as experiments addressing parametric adiabatic and non-adiabatic amplification and phase conjugation.