Hello all, new here and newly independent.

I worked in acquisitions and development for various production companies in LA and decided about a year ago that I would prefer to hoe my own line. I quickly found a project and wrapped a week ago last Sunday. It is a documentary that I shot in Europe about a fascinating artifact that has a Stonehenge sort of mystique.

This past week I have been stressed because I cannot decide on how to edit it. I want to create and utilize graphics aside from and within the footage. I suppose primarily I would like to know what is the best I can do with my computer/processor? Ultimately, I fear I have been building up an inferior computer.

Here are the specs:

HDV Footage shot on fx1 (one interview has flashing, is this fixable in post? this would be a selling point for me. Otherwise I need to utilize animations, or go back and reshoot which I may do anyway.)

Pentium 4 2.7 GHz
Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT video card.
Enough hard disk space for about 20hrs of footage.

I was considering Vegas, then Avid then Premiere (if there are others I should consider please le me know). Does Vegas and Avid have After Effects type programs in them?

Regardless, I fear I will not be able to use any of them. Will this processor totally frustrate me or even work? Should I get another Motherboard? Occasionally my computer freezes up because the video card gets gunked up, this is an easy fix. But maybe I need to consider a whole new system?

For simple animations and editing what platform should I strongly pursue and can I get away with using this computer?

Your opinions are greatly appreciated.

Happy to be part of the DVi,

Sincerely,
Tim

HDV is more demanding than miniDV for editing because of the compression format used. For this reason it is better to use a more powerful pc than the one you have - the new dual core pcs will offer much better (ie faster) performance. Your spec looks marginal for HDV.

You should also consider Edius. It is a newer nle than the others, but it handles HDV as well as any. More information can be found here:
http://www.canopus.com/home.php
The forums are also a helpful source of information for what you want to do - including working with After Effects and other software.

your video card has purevideo acceleration, which i believe works with premiere 2.0 and ae 7(???)... so i would investigate that, see what's involved, before spending a dime on any other hardware or software:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/newfeatures.html#nf9