What is a good software package to do the following...
1... Capture vid from my camera via USB.
2... Encode it at a reasonable size (emailable).
3... Allow me to go frame by frame to capture stills.
4... Not a ton of cash.

It is a Sony DCR-HC21 but the software it came with sucks. 2 min capture is a 600mb AVI file.

Thanks In advance

bump

For entry level video editing/compression Ulead's Video Studio might do the trick.  When you say emailable (5MB or less) that's a whole lot of compression so don't expect super sharp videos if they are over several minutes long.  Here's some reviews of video editing software.

The reason that the file is so large is that it is saving the output as an uncompressed AVI.

Don't ditch the firewire to capture the video from the camera.  What you really need to work on is compressing and editing the video once you have it.

Ulead makes a nice entry level video editor, Adobe's Premiere Elements (and Premiere Pro) are good systems.

For E-mailing videos I'd reccomend considering encoding them as wmv or asf.  Those tend to be smaller files.

Well.... if you are going to import video from a camcorder firewire is the way to go.

use windows movie maker.

or

http://www.tmpgenc.net/

for any info. or tutorials check out vcdhelp.com

But personally I use firewire for transfer
Adobe Premiere or Avid Xpress for encoding
Adobe After Effects, Canopus Xplode, and Boris FX for transitions and other effects.