There are a couple of concerns in editing HD video:

1. Format: Better HD consumer camcorders record to ACVHD or HDV. Most prosumer editors handle HDV. Some also handle ACVHD. Both require a reasonably heft PC for editing. Both ACVHD and HDV generally are limited to 13.7 gigabytes per hour, the same limitation as miniDV.

Some cheaper consumer camcorders use various proprietary formats. These will be very difficult to edit unless the camcorder manufacturer provides conversion software. Without it, you'll have a hard time finding editing software.

2. Editing hardware: Generally, editing ACVHD or HDV requires, at minimum, a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo (or equivalent) processor and, absolute minimum, 2 gigabytes of memory. However, the weak link in the chain is, usually, the graphics card -- a reasonably powerful card is needed for real-time preview when editing. For example, my Sony Vaio laptop, which has a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 gigabytes, can manage HDV editing when using the laptop's screen but if I try to use it with an external HDMI monitor, previews freeze.

3. Compression: Hard disk and SSD consumer camcorders generally use very, very high compression rates. Transcoding from a highly-compressed format to something editable and then re-transcoding to either DVD (mpeg2) or BluRay DVD will result in significant quality loss. This problem will be increased by adding special effects, transitions, titles, etc.