Re: Avid ... peculiarities

[Steve Johnson] "An image sequence first must be automatically transcoded into some codec Media Composer likes or thinks is appropriate for my project. This takes forever on my Quad core"

Not sure why a Quad is so slow, but yes, Avid transforms video/graphics to it's OMF or MXF format. It adds metadata and a long alphanumeric name that allow it to associate the media with the right project. Whatever format Avid accepts, when it imports/transcodes, those are the eventual 2 formats it puts into the media folders.

[Steve Johnson] "I would like to apply multiple effects to a clip, but any given clip in the timeline has only one icon for effects"

Multiple effects in Avid are stacked using a procedure called "nesting". Hold the ALT key as you drag the second and subsequent effects onto your video clip. Each subsequent effect pushes the previous one lower in the "stack". Select your overwrite tool and double click the clip to expand the clip and see/modify all your effects. You can also use the "step in/step out" keys which look like down and up (respectively) arrows in the quick menu. Experience and experimentation will dictate when to use each method. Note: you cannot nest audio effects. You're allowed one realtime and one rendered effect before you have to "bounce" the mixdown to another track. Boo Avid!

[Steve Johnson] "it doesn't appear that Avid allows for a nesting of sequences."

You can only open one sequence at a time. But you can drag a sequence into the source window and overwrite/insert it your open timeline. Be very observant of which tracks you've targeted and where they are going, especially when dealing with sequences having differing amounts of audio and video tracks.

[Steve Johnson] "Last, in a very basic project, inevitably I will need to zoom and/or pan footage."

The simplest way to do this is to apply the 3D Warp effect found in the Blend category IIRC. It offers the basic transforms found in the motion menu of Premiere.

Comparison and contrast may allow you to get up to speed a bit quicker in the Avid. But as a Premiere user myself, I think you've just exhausted the usefulness of that method. Further gains may be accelerated by forgetting the old ways. Any way you slice it, the Avid is a strange beast. But once you become Avid-centric, you'll hopefully discover a stable editor that allows you to concentrate on actual editing.