It doesn't have to be a digital video cam. You can use a less expensive camera and a video capture card to import the video into your PC. The DV is a lot faster and since it copies the video as a file instead of frames you won't get dropped frames that can happen with a capture device.
There are "lite" versions of video editing software that come with most cameras and capture cards. One thing to consider is if you are importing DV to your PC you have to "render" all that video and it can take a really long time so you will want all the PC power you can muster. If you decide to go the capture card route you will need an extremely fast harddrive subsystem so that you can reduce the chances of dropped frames.
