After Effects request (Tips, Tricks and a specific problem)

[DemonAMVs]

I have been using After Effects for a little while now and I want to get some general advice from people, anything that might seem useful would be awesome.

Anyway, getting onto my specific problem. You see, AE have a limited timeline, and cutting/moving clips around is not nearly as intuitive as Sony Vegas or other linear editing software. This is difficult for me as it forces me to manually, cut and render every single clip I want to use, which becomes a big problem if I have to later extend that clip, I am limited to what I render.
And rendering is generally just a long and laborious job.

Is there a feature that allows me to quickly scan though entire episodes and pick out small sections to add to my composition? If not, what program do you use to cut/render your clips so there manageable in After Effects. It would be awesome to do all my editing in AE and not need Sony Vegas.

Thanks to all that help.

[Brad]

Hmm. This might make for a good topic on a new tutorial. Like, a general "editing" workflow in AE. If you want to ask more AE questions, check out this thread.

[Eake4]

You can cut by splitting the clip in After Effects. No need to render from certain programs and bring them in AE since thats just tedious work and could damage quality of video source if not using lossless codecs. Compiling the entire video with clips takes a little longer than most other programs since you kinda have to use keyframes to fade and all but thats no need to stop you from editing in AE solely. Besides compiling the video in AE gives you way more options for what you can do with the clips and what you cant unlike Vegas. In AE you can easily achieve a 3D cut or something more fancy if you wish but in Vegas that sort of work would be impossible or will take a far more longer time. Overall i think AE actually saves more time than Vegas, but i guess its up to personal preference.