buy a mac and get final cut. That is the best way to go. There are many "offsite data backup" versions of premier floating around. Not that I approve of such behaviour.
Pinnacle Studio 8 with capture card $250 (captures in real time)
Adobe Premeire $800 (does not capture in real time)
Adobe After Effects $4999 ( high end editing )
Avid $10,000 (yes ten thousand ) Movie Studio editing hardware / software. The best!!
any others are $h!t -- by far, Pinnacle is the best bang for the buck -- it can do anything these others can do -- its great for beginners or advanced users... its easier to use.
I own a Digital Video Editing Company so if i can help you in any way, let me know. i still use pinnacle 8 sometimes because of its non-complexity.
How good is Windows Movie Maker? Really, I'm wanting to do a little amatuer editing too. Nothing hard core, just overlaying music and splicing clips together. Stuff like that.
Hey Raven, you can get Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, and Illustrator all together for $1,249. Where did you get $4,999 for just After Effects? After Effects alone is $699 Typo I guess?
Anyway, Windows Movie Maker isn't that bad if all you want to do is save some movies from your camcorder to your computer. The thing that you have to watch is in order to get decent quality and a decent video size, the file gets rather large for download.
Hell with the size though, it will just make us all want to move to high speed connections that much faster