[Sir Robin]

Hi! I'm pretty new to these forums but they seem pretty wide ranged and thought I'd give it a go for some issues i'm having and maybe some of you guys can help?!

Basically I've got this GOPRO HD camcorder that records HD video onto a 16GB SDHC card. Yesterday I tried it out by recording some video at full HD setting (1080p) but cannot seem to view the MPEG-4 file on my laptop. The first image/frame comes up and then it's as if the computer really struggles to play it at all. Like it's very jumpy where you can still hear a lot of the sound, but a bit more extreme where It's so jumpy the movie doesn't appear to be playing at all. I've tried using VLC media player as well as windows media player and realplayer but they all have the same problem.

The idea is so that in the future I can take video footage from kart racing that I do, and the aim will be to be able to edit my videos to include music and title screens with maybe a couple of basic effects; So am also looking for suggestions as to a half-decent amateur video editing software suitable for HD video.

Any help? Sorry for the long winded explanation/question but I obviously want to be clear about the problem!
Thanks so much in advance!!