Professional video editing has developed workarounds for that problem as far back as the 80's. Basically they do the editing on a low-res version of the footage

Professional video editing has developed workarounds for that problem as far back as the 80's. Basically they do the editing on a low-res version of the footage (it's called an "offline edit"), then export it as an "Edit Decision List (EDL)" and then the big computers crunch on it overnight using the original, hi-res footage and produce an "online" edit. Companies like Avid sell specialized servers that have an in-built LCD screen on their case so that you can see the programme as it is being processed. Online editing is still quite CPU intensive so I don't think that SSDs alone will change that workflow but it might still help somewhat at offline editing.