I have a Mini DV camcorder (Canon) and a firewire card and a 1 gig AMD PC (with 60 gig in RAID and 256 in RAM on WinMe). I want to 1) film family stuff and send on CD that "anyone can play on their PC," 2) "upload" whatever I creat/edit back to the camcorder so I can play it back on just about any TV/VCR and 3) eventually, I would like to "burn" a VCD to play on a stand alone DVD player (we only have one in the family and that's a Mitsubishi that doesn't play them).

I have tried Canon Home Video 1.6 software and IntroDV (which only captures .mov) and think I need something a step above (like 2nd grade instead of Kindergarten). I'm leaning towards Pinnacle Studio DV 7, but have seen posts here on FREEWARE that look great and also heard on Magix Video Deluxe.

I also have Nero 5.5 so all I need now is a brain to put it all together with some editing software. Reviews, recommendations? Thanks.