Is after affects only compatable with adobe or can i use it with pinnacle??
if not what effects program should i use?

You have asked the wrong question.

I suspect you are thinking of After Effects as a plugin for Premiere. It is not. It is a stand alone program that can import video and audio files and spit out more video and audio files, that's at. It is compatible with whatever video codec you have installed and so you can create a usable workflow with ANY video editor you might choose.

However, if you buy both Premiere and AE as part of the Production bundle (or whatever it is called this year) then there are certain integration benefits like using the same memory making rerendering unncessary when takling a clip from one to the others. But even then I rarely do that. I export from Premeire and import into AE, do my thang with it and export again, importing that final result back into Premiere.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

After Effects is used with Final Cut, Avid, Vegas, Premiere, any editing application you can name. Some of the great effects you see in movies and television come from After Effects.

You will export and import between your editing application and After Effects. I don't personally think much of Pinnacle but if that's what you got it will work just fine.

You might want to figure out if you really need After Effects and what it can do. You might not even need the software, there are many effects that can be accomplished without After Effects.

You can also look at videocopilot.net for some fun tutorials on what AE can do.

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Wil Chapman Jr.
Oly, Washington
DP, Producer, Editor

Feel free to visit ( UPDATED!!! )
http://www.myspace.com/chapmanphotography
http://www.myspace.com/sport_specific (personal and training site)

And the ones at the Cow are great also
creativecow.net