Can someone recommend a good editing suite for me?

[ReloadPsi]

I'm thinking of trying out Adobe Premiere but before I waste my time getting my hands on it, is it actually any good? Basically I'm wanting to be able to edit videos in a somewhat non-linear fashion and superimpose images (and sometimes bits of other videos) over the footage, none of which is possible in Windows Movie Maker. Some very, very basic keying (fancy term for adding transparency to a green/blue screen, but also for other colours) might be nice, but not essential.

P.S. I am of course running Windows so Final Cut is out of the question... I get to use it in college but I never have any luck importing my own stuff into it due to compression codecs it doesn't recognise or something. Plus, you know, college isn't my house. Yeah anyway, has to be a Windows program.

[Rostum]

Adobe Premiere is great -- it's what I use. If you are into post-production you could also get After Effects which is great too, imo. After all, they are industry standards just like Final Cut and Combustion.

[Serapy]

Are you kidding? Adobe/Macromedia offers the best programs in the entire world, end of. Although, have fun trying to get good at them.

[starseeker]

Adobe Premier Elements is good if you have a budget. I got my copy for about £30 and it's great. It has a few flaws, like being designed to work with DVD footage, but otherwise you can do a lot of effects with it. If you want I can send you a beta of a video I've been working on in Premier Elements so you can see what you can do with it.

[ReloadPsi]

Well Premiere seems to work fine for me, although After Effects refuses to install due to a low system spec... go figure. I probably won't need it anyway.

It was pretty easy to pick up actually, but having to tell it to render almost everything you drag into the timeline gets a bit tedious :p Once I figure out how to do the equivalent to that "View Image and Wireframe" stuff that's in Final Cut I'll be laughing.

[starseeker]

As far as I know, that isn't possible. I just rough cut what I want and then render. And with video editing, the better the specs, the better.