We were talking about a rotating mount with a stepper motor, and put it on the roof timed to follow the sun so that it's always in the same place in the frame.
Yeah, AE is more for compositing. You could do time-lapse in it, I guess, but it's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. And a pretty awkward sledgehammer at that.
I always end up going back to whatever I've got installed from Adobe CS because half of the editors out there seem completely shit, or can't handle HD/H264 properly. Or maybe I haven't looked into this enough.
Unfortunately (for you, not me), I use FCP, so that doesn't help. But any of the main Windows competition (Premiere, Vegas etc) should have demo or laddish versions to play with.
I'm hoping to commandeer my girlfriends old HTC Wildfire to mount in the car in a reasonable position. I'm thinking a photo per minute. I'd love to do every 10 seconds or something to create something a bit smoother but I think that would be a bit ridiculous to sort afterwards.