my oh has got himself a sony handycam for filming the hounds etc.....however all i have seen so far is endless shots of grass and sky as it goes from hound to hound!! so not knowing anything about video, can anyone tell me if there is some free easy to understand software one can download, for splicing and editing  home video?? its digital not tape.

Depending on the cameras output and it's format you may find Premiere Elements does the trick, you do need to have a firewire (i link) output on the camera and input on your pc or Laptop, USB is too slow to do the job.