Well the first truth is if you are interested in building a Video Editing system you would be better off with a *looks around* MAC. I don't use Macs much myself but I will hand it to them in the multimedia department.
Now that said, building a PC for video editing...first thing you'll probably want is a good speed P4 processor. The P4s in at least my personal opinion do a little better with heavy video editing than an Athlon XP...but thats personal opinion, at high speeds you could get away with either....However, a P4 coupled with Rambus will probably get you better performance than an Athlon XP with DDR. If you were to go the P4 route I'd go all out with Rambus for video editing, otherwise go Athlon XP and get a faster proccessor for your money.
Also you'd want to make sure you get plenty of RAM as video editing is one of those few areas where RAM at the 512mb and beyond level will continue to show a difference.
For a video card, you'd definately want the Radeon 8500dv All in Wonder card. Your comment about just getting by with a pure 8500...well the All in Wonder cards are designed around video input where as the plain 8500 cards are essentially gaming cards with some extra video stuff. If you really want good video editing, forking out the extra cash for the 8500DV is definately worth it.
Hmmm as for other stuff....well sound might be of big importance to you...in that case I'd suggest something like an Creative Audigy Platinum(or Extigy) or Game Theater XP to give you the maximum amount of audio flexability.
As for drives and the like....since your doing video editing, I'd figure at least a DVD-rom drive and CD burner would be a must. DVD rom drive giving you that lovely DVD movie input and well *cough* ripping *cough* and of course CD burner for storage purposes. However, if you want to do video editing so you can pump stuff out for DVD players, you may want to consider a DVD Burning drive. If a DVD Burner is of interest for you, here is the basic rundown on the two formats to choose from:
DVD-RW : Burns CDRs, CDRWs, DVD-Rs, and DVD-RWs. Its not too bad a format and its compatable with most DVD players(only some older/cheap Players cause issues). Main downside outside of some incompatability is that the DVD movie formating is only OK...it gets the job done decently though.
DVD+RW : Burns CDRs, CDRWs, DVD+RWs. +RW is a much better movie burning format. It has much better compatability than -RW and the DVD movie formatting is much much better. However, +RW has one major flaw....currently it does not have write once +R discs. This means two things. 1) you have to buy rewritable media for all your DVDs and 2) rewritable media has less reflectivity that write-once media, so the DVD you burn may not work on the first try in some DVD players because it simply isn't reflective enough. The one thing to note though is that my understanding is very soon the +RW format will begin supporting new write-once +R media. Once +RW gets +R writing capabilities it will be vastly superior in my opinion. Once +R hits the market some +RW drive makers will release firmware updates so you can burn +R in drives bought now but its not a garantee.
My recommendation if you were interested in buying a DVD burner for your video editing, either buy a DVD-RW now or wait a bit for +R media and drives to hit the market then buy DVD+RW. Also there is another format DVD-RAM but -RW and +RW are the ways you go if you want to make DVD movie discs. If DVD burners aren't your bag quite yet, then just go for a CD burner at least...that way you have Video Disc capability at least
Anyway, good luck building your system...should be fun.
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