Exporting in Premiere Pro takes forever

[kimco52]

I edit video in Premiere Pro. The length is about 1 hour. I export to the MPEG Encoder, which is the Main Concept encoder.

I choose to export to MPEG-2 for DVD. It is set for 2 pass VBR for high quality.
The encoding process for 1 hour video is about 6+ hours. I am doing a 1 hour 20 minute one now and it appears it will take 10 hours. I know, start it and go to bed or go to work (where I am now).

Then to make the DVD, I use DVDit Pro6. A one hour video takes an hour to "create" it... building movies as they call it. Then it takes about 10 minutes to actually write it.

Why does the MPEG encoding take so long? Is that normal? or what am I doing wrong?

My computer is AMD Athlon 2700+ with a separate disk drive for the final file with over 160GB free.

[drewzor]

Well you have set it to two pass
First pass it will run through gathering data about it, this will take ages especially if you have rendered effects into it.
Then the second pass will encode it based on the gathered data and yes it takes forever.
you could export DV avi and use your encoder to produce the dvd?

ADDED THOUGHT
Alt you could just encode 1-pass 4000kbs or 6000kbs CBR which will bypass all the VBR calculations your pc would have to do?

[kimco52]

The video is primarily a sporting event with motion for the most part and some minor movements at times (on an announcer). I was assuming that a variable bit rate is a compromise and generally works and saves space.

However, since it is only an hour, a constant bit rate would not put me out of the 4.7GB size. Therefore, I could probably set it at 6000 and get a good quality video and it would still not fill the disk. And it would cut the encoding time by half.

It would sure be a help.
Thanks for the advice.