hey- i'm having trouble finding an editing program that will read the DVD-R and DVD-RW discs that i have recorded footage on my sony handy cam, also i have a new computer with Windows Vista on it, what program will work for me? and not cost me $800. jeez
thanks

Sadly, the manufacturer of your camcorder assumed that buyers who bought this model would not be interested in editing anything they filmed with it. DVD-based cameras record in a greatly compressed MPG file format that was originally intended as a distribution format, and not an editing one. They usually transfer footage from the camera to a PC via USB, and manufacturers sometimes (but not Sony) include fairly basic editing software with the camcorder package. A possible workaround for editing your footage is to rip the files off the DVD, do some file conversions, and then edit from there. Buy a miniDV camera if you want to edit footage. One with an analogue-digital passthrough feature (not expensive) will also allow you to feed the footage from your DVD camera via the miniDV camera to the PC in edit-friendly DV AVI file format. Then sell your DVD camera on eBay - someone will take it.