Processing for DVD

I'm using an older G5 tower, dual processor, to compress for DVD. A 1hr 30min program in HD 720p takes almost 11 hours to process to SD DVD, the "best quality-90min" setting. Is this normal? My Macbook Pro also takes about that long to process. I'm using 800 firewire Graids for the media. Sure seems like a lot of processing time.

Thanks!

I did a feature on a G5 several years ago. If I remember correctly, it took around 8 hours to compress the 90 minute SD sequence, so 11 hours for an HD sequence sounds reasonable.

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setup a Qmaster cluster between your Macbook Pro and G5, and that should help a bit. Problem is with a 720p file is that Compressor is needing to downconvert to SD size first, and then encode the MPEG-2. That's going to be a bit of a bear on any machine, but the G5 will really show its age compared to just about any modern Intel system when it comes to crunching numbers in that way.