Yes, you can do all the partitioning from within the installation from
an ISO disk or flash drive. Gparted is handy for the times you might
want to set up your partitions in advance for more than one version of
Linux or whatever. I'm not sure that Gparted comes with the
installation but it's certainly available in the repositories or you
can go to their website and download an ISO to burn as a standalone
self booting app.

Yes, GParted is available from a repository. I have it on a CD and
use it when setting up
dual boot systems as well as being able to make an independent check on
any drive that
is connected.

Yes, the install will do all the partitioning for you. The point of
gparted is that you can use it to partition and format any extra disks
you might add to your system - you cannot use it to partition the system
itself as it will only work on unmounted disks and you cannot unmount
the running system.

Personally, I find it very useful, but then I deal with quite a large
number of USB hard disks. I doubt that most people would have any need
for it

I agree, on a system being built for dual boot, using the
Gpartd live CD allows the view of the visual presentation of the disk
better than the partition manager of the Ubuntu live CD's, while I do
believe it also is Gpartd although in different form. Once a disk is set up
for dual boot with the windows partition, recovery, reduced and the
Linux partitions set in size and either formated or not, then the Ubuntu
live CD booted, you still will need to go through the partitioning of
the Ubuntu CD and format or not your choice. Once all is set on future
loads you will or should recognise the layouts and disk partitions of
the root file system and the /home and leave it unformated.
I think the built in partition manager on the Ubuntu live CD could be
bothersome to do a dual boot system even after I have done one or
two.

I use gparted and is available in the repositories. it is also installed
on the live CD.
I start every install selecting "Try Ubuntu" from the menu. This insures
that everything works to start. I then use gparted to change the size on
the disk and make sure that the harddisk is partitioned right. The
primary will only allow 4 partitions and many new computers are settup
with all 4 partitions on the primary taken. Why manufactures like HP
don't set up the harddrive with extended partitions I don't know. The
tools partition can be saved and removed not worring if you loose it
because they can be downloaded many times from the manufacturers web site.

Because of this failing on the manufacturers part, I make sure this does
not need to be corrected.

I then resize the harddrive, add and extended partition and then click
on the install Icon. If you can connect to the internet then drivers
are obtained automatically if available. You can use; 3g dongle, usb
dongle wifi card that drivers come with ubuntu (free, non-propriatary,
approved), or lan cat-5.

Updates are taken care of as well as drivers needed are loaded. You
still have to install them by clicking on the icon on the top bar or the
hardware item in the system menu. When connected to the net the install
takes longer but the job is complete that way.

It sounds intimidating but it's not. Because it sounds intimidating,
that is why I install for many people. The more installs I do the easer
it gets. Learning to resize before the install has made installs a lot
easer because there is less troubleshooting with that approach. The
connection to the Internet also lowers the effort required.

Can someone post a list of the partitions as created by the install and then as
they would need to be modified to allow Kdenlive to make a 3.9G DVD? A brief
description of which partition is for what included would be good too, I can't
remember what has been said already about that so it would be good to have both
in one place.