Grant, thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I have a lot to learn and I figure that wasn’t too unusual and I’m easily intrigued by this stuff in my newbie state.
I loaded the free Avid product and sadly it crashes alway on loading clips. I have it on a 2011 Imac with 32GB RAM. First on my to-do list, build or acquire a better machine.
That machine should be more than sufficient for HD editing. I used to run Premiere Pro on a 2011 MBP with 8GB of RAM and it worked well.
I saw comparisons recently showing FCPX to be noticeably more performant than Premiere Pro, but your mileage may vary. Either one should work fine. It’s not obvious on the App Store page, but you can download a 30-day trial of Final Cut Pro here.
Also, I think multiple video tracks with blending is achievable in iMovie—so I wouldn’t dismiss that out-of-hand. If/when you hit the limitations of iMovie, you can consider buying something. iMovie does allow you to export projects to Final Cut Pro.
Lots of Luma Mode and Light Leaks on your video.