I just bought a new Sony digital camcorder and I am in the process of
creating a website to upload my movies to so I can share w/family and
friends.

I guess I have two questions really:

1) What's the best video editing/manipulation/management software for newbies?

2) What's the best format to stream from a website?  Should I just
upload the raw .wav, .mpg, .mov, etc. file or should I convert to
flash or use something else?  I hear a lot of people have success
w/quicktime.

Thanks.

Marc

Thats a loaded question !

If we make a couple of assumptions.
One - that you have a firewire port on your computer so that you can
connect the video camera to the computer for video capture purposes. (
if you do not have a firewire port, the ADS Pyro card is a good choice
to install)
http://www.adstech.com/products/API300/intro/API300intro.asp?pid=API300

Two - that you want to edit the video footage a bit prior to upload.
Try this :  http://www.avid.com/freedv/index.asp?dm=whatsNew


The most flexible encoding solution for you is the Media Cleaner software.
Although it is a "Professional" application, it has templates,
wizards, and presets to automatically produce practically any format
you would want to publish for the web and for DVD. And its available
for both Mac or PC.

see:  http://www4.discreet.com/Files/cleanerxl/cleanerxl_datasheet.pdf

and their quicktour presentation:
 http://www4.discreet.com/cleanerxl/cleaner.php?id=123

You can use the software at a very basic wizard like level - ie a
couple of mouse clicks, or, as you find increasing use and
applications for your camera, you can create quite sophisticated 
media types.

Good Luck and Have Fun !

methodical