Which video editing program is best for these 2 PCs?

I'm looking at getting video editing programs on my 2 pc's. I'm planning on editing videos and music for online usage (mostly cutting/splitting/joining/downsizing). Some of them will be HD. Anyway, one PC is a desktop, the other is a laptop.
I work with both of them so I want to get the appropriate programs for each.

Desktop:
AMD Athlon fx53 socket 939
1GB ram
74GB 10k Raptor
1TB Storage SATA2
ati radeon x800xt 256mb
WinXP

Laptop:
Compaq CQ50
AMD Turion Dual Core RM70 2.00GHZ
3GB Ram
nvidia 8200m G (HD capable, unlike the desktop)

The desktop isn't HD capable but it feels faster and has an older but better video card and cooling. It can play HD videos but at a very very slow framerate cause it's a dx9 card. The laptop has a crappy fan but it runs HD videos. Which programs would you install on each?

i wish i had a good recommendation of 1 that will work well but unfortunately i do not. I can say that you should probably steer clear of adobe premiere pro, it is a real memory hog. how advance of editing do you actually need? basic cutting and splicing?

I don't need really advanced editing. I am simply going to be cutting, splitting, joining, and probably downsizing. Sometimes the source videos will be HD mkv's, other times they won't.

I will go for the obvious choice, and suggest Sony Vegas Pro, I recommend version 8, because I have heard from friends and colleagues that 9 sucks for compatibility with certain add-ons and codecs, like Xvid.

Thanks. I will give that a try in the next few days and report back.

dont listen to j0nsm1th.

use Sony Vegas 7.0, trust me, it has 0 bugs, pro 8 and 9 has tons of bugs which he hasn't 'experienced' but there are lots... which my friends who are professional directors and moviemakers have experienced.
And please john, dont say things which u don't know like the XviD in .avi, it bugged with ure Sony Vegas pro 8 too -_-
Also, vegas 8 + 9 will lag a lot more than 7.0e

v0nch said:

dont listen to j0nsm1th.
...
And please john, dont say things which u don't know like the XviD in .avi, it bugged with ure Sony Vegas pro 8 too -_-

Click to expand...

Hi v0nch, your input is welcome, but please refrain from marginalizing other members like this. There are ways to disagree with people without accusing them of lacking knowledge, or suggesting that their input be ignored.

As to the topic at hand, I've been happy with Sony Vegas 9 so far. I edit AVCHD video recorded by my Canon HF100, and I've found that Vegas works better for me than Corel Videostudio X3 and Adobe Premiere CS4. VS X3 had a bug in which my rendered video would stutter or stop playing altogether, and Premiere CS4 seemed to have very long render times, and it didn't have built-in support for rendering video in the same format as my source video (at least not that I could figure out).

That being said, I think both of those systems are going to struggle mightily when working with HD video. Editing on my rig (Q6600 at 3.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM) starts to get choppy when I'm working with multiple HD clips, adding transitions, titles, etc. I've found that editing HD video is mostly CPU-dependent, so having a video card that can offload H.264 decoding duties from the CPU won't help very much.

Thanks for the input guys. For now I installed adobe elements 8.0, and I'm gonna give that a try to see how it works. I will see if I can find sony vegas 7.0 to compare. I will report back of course.

@KillrBuckeye, I know him in real life, and I teach him editing & encoding etc. I told him already that Vegas pro 8 & 9 has many bugs and not worth the price for the bugs, maybe lots of people haven't experienced it yet but they are there, my friends have actually experienced them. The reason I said it this way was because I already mentioned this to him and he is saying the opposite of what is true thinking that he has the knowledge; therefore this made me a little angry - sorry for saying this the wrong way.

I said that to j0hnsm1th as it was true and I didn't want avesta to recieve wrong information which what j0hn was saying (not intentionally though).
Sorry that I said it the wrong way.

It's okay v0nch. Thanks for understanding.

So I tried adobe premiere elements 8.0 and it froze most of the time when I load a video.
I just uninstalled vegas 7.0 as I couldn't get the preview window to work. Gonna try 8.0 or 9 now.

v0nch said:

dont listen to j0nsm1th.

use Sony Vegas 7.0, trust me, it has 0 bugs, pro 8 and 9 has tons of bugs which he hasn't 'experienced' but there are lots... which my friends who are professional directors and moviemakers have experienced.
And please john, dont say things which u don't know like the XviD in .avi, it bugged with ure Sony Vegas pro 8 too -_-
Also, vegas 8 + 9 will lag a lot more than 7.0e

Click to expand...

v0nch said:

@KillrBuckeye, I know him in real life, and I teach him editing & encoding etc. I told him already that Vegas pro 8 & 9 has many bugs and not worth the price for the bugs, maybe lots of people haven't experienced it yet but they are there, my friends have actually experienced them. The reason I said it this way was because I already mentioned this to him and he is saying the opposite of what is true thinking that he has the knowledge; therefore this made me a little angry - sorry for saying this the wrong way.

I said that to j0hnsm1th as it was true and I didn't want avesta to recieve wrong information which what j0hn was saying (not intentionally though).
Sorry that I said it the wrong way.

Click to expand...

WTH? Always flaming... just because you used to edit doesn't mean you are king of software... I said nothing wrong... what I said was opinion, and I stated that XVid is a codec, which YOU told me.