Looking for "Easy-to-use" home video editing software for my Panasonic HDC-SD800 Camcorder

Nick - have you tried the free editors that come with most computers? (iLife/Movie if you have a Mac or Windows Movie Maker if you have a Windows 7 machine).

One of these should work fine to edit your short clips into a longer, edited clip.

Cheers,

Bill
Hybrid Camera Revolution

Nick,

The other Bill is correct, Windows Movie Maker may be what you want. He is used to me adding to his brief suggestions. Here is what I did.

My timeline is about the same. I bought a Panasonic SDT750 a few months before you bought your 800. I started with the Pansonic HD Writer and still use it to transfer and catalog all my video on my computer. And, I still use it to edit where I want everything to stay in 1080p60. Once I got used to Panasonic's version of "work flow" it went pretty smoothly.

Next I tried Windows Movie Maker that can be downloaded as a a free addition to Windows 7. I liked it. It is easy. It is also limited. Although, the rendered output quality is good, I didn't like how the 1080p60 was handled.

Next I tried Sony Vegas Home Movie Studio Platinum HD 11.0. It is the under $100 version of their very much more expensive pro version. I got it on a weird sale at Fry's with a $70 rebated. I liked it a lot and it was beginning to "grow on me". After about a month, a version update opportunity appeared and I tried it. The process eliminated all the help files. Sony instruction were to re-install the software from scratch. That messed with the copy protection tied into the registry file and it would not run. It took Sony support a month to email me that I needed to create a new user and it might be OK.

With a month available, I tried Adobe Premier Elements 10. It is Adobe's version aimed at consumers for around $75. Their pro version is over $600. The delightful part of PE10 is that it has levels of tools. At the top, it is very easy and straight forward. It is easy to learn how to quickly trim, arrange clips, include transitions and add titles. it even has some automatic movie generation features (that I don't like very well). Should you want to dig deeper it can give you control over everything from color to camera shake by applying "effects". When you are done with your video, there are a variety of choices to produce optimized versions for everything from YouTube to Blu-Ray players. No, it is not perfect. Although it handles every file format my camera can make, it will not render to 1080p60. Instead, it offers other choices that do play beautifully on my 55" TV. Some reviews will be negative, but those seem to come from people with older computers with limited capacity. Overall, it is widely accepted around the world with many support and training tools. My favorite training tool is at http://www.lynda.com.

Let me know if there is something I can do to help you get HD Writer to work better. My version is 2.6 and I think the 800 came with 3.0, but we will see.

Bill

Windows Movie Maker will reduce your 1080/60p video quality, I wouldn't use it. What is it that Panasonic's supplied HD Writer software won't accomplish for you? You can combine clips, add transitions, titles and music, all while outputting a 1080/60P native file.