As I said, I usually use Final Cut Pro, but since it's from apple I believe it is only available for mac. But you could use adobe premiere for example. It is quite similar. I am sure there are many more video editing programs, so it's up to you to figure out what suits you best.
About the easy way, i am not sure if there is one. Mastering maya compositing software and then editing your film will take time. But depending on what you want to make, you don't always have to use high end software. When I did my first short animation I used iMovie to add sound. That was really basic and you can learn it in some hours.
I don't know how hard it is to simulate cloth, what I meant was that depending on your hardware it might take your computer a while to calculate the simulation.
I am sure there are tutorials on how to get your character dressed. I could recommend the lowPoly character one, because it is a complete set. You build a character, you texture it, and most importantly for me was, you learn how to rig it, and later animate it. And the LP character has a shirt pants, shoes and stuff, so you would learn how to make clothes.
I think that would give you a good overall idea, of at least the maya part of making short films.