imovie alternative?

I'll give you my dumbed down answer and I'm sure plenty of people will also end up posting so:

If you want ease, I'd say try the older version of iMovie which hopefully is still available on Apple's website. When they changed iMovie they messed it up in m opinion and the older version still is a great, easy to use piece of software.

As for FCP and Avid and the like, they are definitely the most powerful, but there is a learning curve for sure. I started on iMovie, went to film school and was forced to use Avid and I hate the way it is set up. FCP is similar to Avid, but I find FCP way more intuitive.

Basically the old iMovie will be the easiest, FCP/Avid the most powerful, but they will take some time to learn. There is a great website with tons of online tutorials on how to learn programs like FCP, but I can't think of its name off the top of my head.

Hope this helps!

 

There is also Final Cut Express, a toned-down version of Final Cut Pro.
http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/ costs 199USD.

As to Avid and FCP, they might be to powerful for your needs.
Avid costs more than 2000USD, FCP is bundled with four other quite good software titles and costs only 1000USD.

Even though Avid is more unintuitive I like it more than FCP.
I come from Ulead (crap) to Premiere (better) to Avid (quite good, but with serious quirks) and have tried Final Cut Studio (FCS) and found FCP harder to get a grasp on than Color or Motion, but that may be due to my rigid Avid mind.

 

Always thought this looked interesting:
Media Edit

Media works also looks good but it's more of a presentation tool. I think it looks good for learning about presentation and how multimedia "goes together" in order to get your point across, so it's good for a student learning generally applicable techniques rather than specifics of an app, but at some point a pro has to nail their colours to the mast and commit keyboard shortcuts to memory.