What software would you recommend for an HP Z230 Workstation?

Question

I just purchased a new Hewlett Packard Z230 Workstation with the intent to catch up on a big backlog (hundreds of hours) of family videos I want to clean up and edit.  This computer is configured as follows:
Intel I7 4770 Quad Core running 3.4 GHz (showing 8 processors in control panel/system/processor)
16 GB ram
256 GB solid state C: drive
3 TB   7,200 rpm D: Drive
nVidia Quadro K2000 video card with 2 GB video ram
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
When I bought this, I planned on using Cyberlink PowerDirector because they advertised it to run well with the features on this computer.  I downloaded a trial version of Power Director, and it met my functional needs.  But it locked up three times in an hour.  When I wrote Cyberlink, they asked for information like the DxDiag.txt file that describes my computer, and the Windows Event logs of the lockups.  Their response was BAFFLING, because they said they design their software for "consumer level platforms," and since they don't test their software on "workstations," they cannot recommend my using it on the Z230.
That said, I'm now looking for alternate software.  I've used Pinnacle a lot in the past, but it has changed so much from the version I used, I'm not wed to any brand at this point.  In addition to usual editing capability, I want to verify that the software I buy has some specific capabilities I need: 
-- Ability to crop video clips and expand the remaining cropped scene back to 16:9 (because I have some incroachment in some video clips from the lens hood of a camera).
-- Ability to normalize audio levels for different clips (some too loud or too quiet) before producing the video. 
-- Desired, not required:  Ability to burn BluRay or DVD on a separate computer than the one where I am editing.
Most, if not all, editing software has these abilities now (PowerDirector and Pinnacle do), so this shouldn't be a problem, but I just want to check.
Any help or guidance would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Terry Quinn

Answer 1

Jim,
Thanks for the recommendations.
You'll get a kick out of this.  I started with a Betamovie in 1984, switched to Hi8 in 1993, and D8 in 2005.  My initial editing was from one beta VCR to another one.   Then I bought a good Sony TR101 Hi8 camcorder, and soon bought a $1,300 EV-S3000 Sony Hi8 VCR that connected to the TR101 by wire, which gave some syncronization of the linear edits (about plus or minus 3 frames when it was happy).  In 2004 I bought a powerful (for then) computer and Pinacle Studio 9, which with some upgrades is still what I've edited with until now.  Some of all three formats of video have been digitized (or downloaded from the D8) as .avi using various hardware.  I expect to complete all of that as .avi.
I've just bought a new Panasonic HC-X920 camcorder (very nice) that produces files in .m2ts, which I think is AVCHD.  As you can probably tell from my history, that may prove to be my last camcorder purchase and format change.  I have no plans now to shoot 4k. 
I checked, and I've overstated the number of hours of video I have left to do.  I recorded just under 200 hours total in all three formats.  45 hours of that (the Beta) are fully edited, and about 22 hours of the Hi8 are finished.  So I'm looking at about 130 hours of video I still need to edit, plus whatever I shoot in HD going forward.
I appreciate what you say about stability.  I fought that with Pinacle 9, and frankly didn't change from that because I finally got it to run stably doing what I did for years.  (However recently it has started behaving badly again, which is another reason I'm upgrading). 
The Quardro came with the HP computer.  The Quadro and GeForce both are spec'd on nVidia's website, and I assumed that since its specs were higher than the GeForce and "matched" Cyberlink's specs for OpenCL, I would be better with the Quadro than the GeForce.  From what I'm hearing here and your recomendation, it sounds like I should sell the Quadro on Ebay and buy a GeForce.  In case I still might end up with Cyberlink, I'll run the card model you suggested by them and see if they "bless" it.
I know the HP computer supports RAID, because I've seen that come up during boot-up.  I always thought RAID was only about reliable backup.  Are you suggesting that if I put a second 3 TB hard drive in my computer, and somehow tie it into RAID, that will improve performance, too?
Terry