Well, if you have an Apple computer, they all come with GarageBand and iMovie. GarageBand is great! And critically-acclaimed! I've played around with iMovie a bit, too, and it's a decent program. You may have to just play with things until you get a hold on it, at least I did a little, but  it's definitely worth a shot!

Otherwise, Microsoft Movie Maker is also included with XP machines, and I think Windows 7. It's supposed to be pretty good, too. I've also heard good things about Wax and Avid FreeDV, but I know nothing about them.

I'd say these are good starting points!

Microsoft Movie Maker is not part of Windows 7 I needed to download Version 2.6. I will say it can be a little basic at times but it does the job fine for what I need to do, and by the sounds of your needs it should do the job too.

I also have Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 installed I haven't played around much with it I just use it to encode the video captured from Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 Screen Capture. Just to mention some features are disable since it is not the Pro version, it's just stuff like saving as MP4 or using the H.264 codec.

I have Adobe Preimer CS5(as recommended by Roo himself) and Windows Movie Maker 2.6(both downloaded for free, so f*** the system! Muwahahaha!).