So, I'm looking to buy a HDR-HC9 for some in-house productions. Nothing fancy, but the boss wants it to look good, so I'm thinking of going HD, simply because everything's going that way anyway and price doesn't seem to be an option.

From what I've read on the Best Buy website, the editing software that comes with the darn thing isn't really that good...at all. So what I'm asking is simply this:

Can anyone reccomend to me a good (yet relatively cheap) editing program that will do "nice" things with the footage that comes off the the HC9 without costing me an arm and a leg? I don't have any experience in HD, or DV (though I'm a quick learner) and need something that's not going to be cumbersome in terms of learning to use it.

Also, my machine is an IBM thinkpad that's running XP; and my partner in crime is using a Mac something or other, so whatever software it is, can't have cross-platform issues.

So....what do you think-- suggestions?

I see its been three days and no one has posted....because the whole area is something of a minefield. In my experience, buying the camera is only a third of the cost of going HD. I have the earlier HDR-HC1 and the results are great, but you need serious software to edit it, a BluRay burner to make discs for any HD project over about 40 minutes and a very fast machine with at least 300 gigs of free storage space. Finally, you have to get used to the idea that mastering an HD disc takes about 5 times as long as the SD discs you will inevitably have to make.....because BluRay penetration [player or PS3] is so spotty as yet.

I use PremierePro2 + Cineform Access HD, have a Blu-Ray burner, I buy white inkjet printable BD-R discs and print with an Epson. The machine is an early, hot, dual core 3.2 GHZ (you'd be best with a quad now) and have a 600gig RAID5 root and another pair of 300s as a RAID0 video array. You can get by with less but your production time could tripple beyond my setup that takes 8x the running time of edited material.

OK anybody else whant to post!

I feel ya - its hard to know what type of editing software to use. I posted the same basic type of question about an hour ago. I am using a lot more expensive gear and catering to a high-end bridal/coporate clientel, so I have a mess of learnin' to do!

I would suggest downloading the demos of everything you think you could afford. Vegas, Pinnacle/Avid Liquid, Speededit (no demo unfort), anything along those lines... and see what you think.

The previous poster is right, at 11GB of space used per hour of HDV - your hard drives wll quickly seem like basic toys very quickly. I probalby will go to one hard drive per project some day, with a massive backup array (that gets unplugged from the wall to avoid lightning spikes every night). You will want a raid0 capable motherboard with SATA as a minimum, otherwise your rendering and build times of HD/Blu-Ray will - lets say - suck. Copying projects around would be really, really slow as well with just straight up USB2/Firewire.

Good luck!