Folks, this is my first attempt at video editing some of the footage I got in South Africa. I finally found a firewire cable (it was in a closet) to connect my Sony camcorder to my Sony Vaio laptop.
Shazam! A window popped-up to offer to use DVGate, which I tried. Rather easy video acquisition: it displays all the information such as time, date, sound info, etc. But not useful for video editing, just for capturing (and to .avi format, which makes just HUGE files).
Then I tried using Dr. DivX for video acquisition: better file size, but no video editing capabilities.
Then I found Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker (it probably comes with WinXP ?) on my hard drive. It does both video acquisition and editing. Here's the first result , after trying for about 5 minutes.
Folks, if you point me to the right software, I'll publish a nice movie on South Africa ;)