SpenceEdit said:

Maybe that just makes me slightly retarded, but I've used Sony Vegas for years and I can do pretty much anything I can think of. I could never get the hang of Adobe's layout in either Premiere or After Effects. It's just not logical. It doesn't flow with your thoughts.

For instance, I want to lay part of a shot over another shot. So I cut half the shot off and drag it over the other one. That would make sense, right? But nooooooo, you have to have this setting, then that setting, then opacity, then animate, then pre-render 12 times, then make three seperate masks that can't touch, and finally by the time you get there you scrap the idea because it ain't worth the aggravation. I feel like if I did something the exact same way twice, the results would be different each time.

I don't know where you get the idea that you have to do all of that stuff with After Effects, because i can assure you that you don't have to at all. I'd never even touched After effects or anything like it when i started ANH:R and i found it unbelievably easy. I never pre render anything. If i want to overlay part of a shot over the top of another then that's all i do. Then use the mask tool to mask out only the section i need to keep and thats it. If the image is slightly unstable compared to the footage you have overlayed it upon so it looks like its moving then you can either stabilise it or track the motion of the original to make it match.