video editing software

[Fun Police]

best of the season to you!
santa brought me a 1080p HD video camera for christmas that had one of those "translated" manuals which is of no help at all. there were no suggestions for and no programs included for a suitable editing software suite. it seems to save files in the MOV format, and i have windows 7 with the included movie maker which is a JPEG format. i have tried "lightsource" and it gave me weird error messages on startup. does anyone have any suggestions for a decent, preferably free video editing software suite that i can download?
thanks in advance and happy new year!
fp

[green granite]

Try windows live movie maker

Windows Live Essentials: Movie Maker (http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials-movie-maker-get-started)

[Capn Bloggs]

MAGIX Movie Edit Pro Premium - Overview (http://www.magix.com/au/movie-edit-pro/premium/)

I've been using MEP since 2003. Fantastic program; quirky sometimes, but a delight to use when you get the hang of it. There are lots of tute videos around the net for it. Try the trial (from the Free Downloads tab); video formats/codecs are many and varied and you'll need to install Quicktime (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL837) to enable MOV support. In Quicktime, deselect all formats except MOV format.

There are 3 versions; MEP MX Plus would probably be the best for you.

Be prepared for a vertical learning curve but after that, the video-editing world is your oyster.

[mixture]

Fun Police,

Are you Mac or PC ? On Mac, use iMovie.

[A A Gruntpuddock]

Try Debut - they have free versions of their software which work with a similar camera I have.

[POWDERFINGER]

Kdenlive (http://www.kdenlive.org/features) is a really good free / opensource editor for Mac OSX and Linux.