[sassan]

Hi Fiona; Long time no see. I still love your name...
Let me translate the good advise of Andy:
Mac = Finalcut-Pro
PC or Mac = Adobe Premiere Pro

I have a little experience with both and can say they are equally good depending on your familiar platform.

In either case, Render part takes a lot of time if your system is slow or deprived from adequate RAM. HD free space is the other major issue so make sure you have a lot free GBs before starting.

I remember of job I had to make for almost same thing you are asking, adding Still images to edited video and then adding right audio, and to make it even more painful, adding Close caption for the song that people would sing in a very off the scale timing. Adobe Premiere really saved me so well after going through a short tutorial.

Recently a friend of mine asked my help for editing and turning digital video to DVD on a new Hard drive recording panasonic camcorder she just bought and I found the accompanied software provided by the panasonic very easy to use and helpful to perform various tasks including Menu making etc. So this would be another area you want to explore before spending a big sum on software alone.

Make sure you have all the needed cables accessories etc and know your client's expectations or rather educate them ahead of time as what they should experience. For eg if you meat the idiot that wants only Full HD recording, tell him BlueRay or HD-DVD are not yet writable so you may provide them with an external hard drive that has the clip on it at a well to be assessed by you price (Please don't go cheap)...

Of course video is not my primary interest but when in need, I suggest Adobe PP.