Recomend video editing softwar

[mjs1973]

Can someone recommend an easy to use video editing software? I have been using Windows Movie Maker and for the most part it works fine for the simple things that I want to do. The only problem that I have found is that I don't have a lot of audio control between music I want to add, and the sound of the actual video. I would prefer something free if possible and simple to use. I do have Photoshop CS4 Extended which has video options but I have no clue how to use them.

The main issue I'm having with WMM is that I want to fade out the background music so I can hear the videos sounds on one clip. I can fade out the music the way I want, but if I adjust the audio levels on the video so that I can hear the clip that I want, it makes all of the video audio too loud. I can't seem to isolate the one clip that I want to hear.

[Skyman]

There really aren't any good ones in the free variety for windows. One way to do it would be to strip out the audio from the video and use a program like audacity for your sound mix then save that and add it back into the video. another cheap way to do it is to buy a cheap firewire card. most of them come with a video editing application that is far better than windows movie maker and they cost less than $20!

If you don't mind tinkering there is a version of Linux called Ubuntu studio that will have everything you need, but you are either going to have to format your computer / partition it for dual boot or run a virtual machine (you will need lots of power to run the virtual machine successfully)

PJ uses premier elements and I think that either that or final cut elements are really where you should be headed. They are like the prosumer cameras of the video world, and whilst I think it is better to step up to the pro versions straight away the price jump is huge so hard to justify. Adobe's website lets you download a trial version then buy a license at the end of the trial if you like it, so it is a great place to start.