I will probably start with final cut or premier, as a few of my clients use that and can show me the ropes. Although they are all very busy and I can't rely on them spoonfeeding me the help.

Anyway, is my laptop cut out for the editing? I want to use pre-made videos, such are tv episodes, as I don't have a video camera and don't record a lot of video. Could I handle 720p content?

Yep. It'll be just fine. Really, the high-horsepower part of video editing is transitions/effects and rendering to a file.

It may get a bit choppy when your previewing clips and the like, depending on resolution. But if your just looking to mess around a bit and get your feet wet with editing it should do the trick.

When I used to do video editing for a living, sometimes if I was on the go I would just do all that I could on my MBP and then render the movie on a Mac Pro in the office. But the MBP was no real slouch in most cases.

and then if that is to limited for you

movie up to final cut express

but imovie comes on your machine..... I would suggest if you dont have the most current ilife that you get it and be happy with that... I use iMovie all the time and unless your going for crazy still if works really well

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this. you don't really need final cut/premier for basic stuff, like you're describing. although i'm not sure of imovie's hd capabilities. the learning curve for final cut/premier is fairly steep, and unless you're going to be spending a lot of time working with it/reading/watching tutorials/have your friends' help all the time, it's going to be slightly aggravating

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if u have an avchd camera it converts it to the apple intermediate codec .... If u want to stay true HD u need atleast final cut express..... Which is a pretty good edited for the person that wants to learn a little but not go crazy

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a friend of mine bought a final cut set along with a logic set one year. lol the instruction manual was thicker than the dvd case. i agree with this, i dled a demo of premier one year, and switched back to windows movie maker a day later

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haha, yeah, it can be brutal. i started using final cut in high school. the teacher couldn't be bothered to learn it, so she had me and another student learn how to use it to teach everyone else. i don't know how many hours i spent watching tutorials and just sitting in class playing with it. i loved it though once i started using it. i would still use imovie for last minute deadlines. i could get a 30 minute 'tv show' we played on a local tv station completely edited, and put on tape in about an hour. but when i had time, i'd do it in final cut. i didn't use it again until senior year of college, and holy crap it changed a lot. i need to get a mac, windowsxfirewire is a pita, my camera isn't recognised, and blahhhhhh

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I'll be sticking with imovie for the time being...

final cut is apple's own movie editing software

premier is adobe

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