Well, I finally decided to see how pre-rendering would go. All I can say is I wish I'd have done it sooner.

I just got done procesing nearly 10 years of analog video; about 31 DVDs, plus numerous extra projects. I'm into the MiniDV era now... :)

Typically, for a 100 minute DVD, it would take anywhere from 5 to 6 hours. I have had 8 hour render times too. This is by letting DVD-A do the DV/AVI rendering.

Now, in short, I can do it all (100%) post-capture processing in about 2 hours.

I am running an AMD Athlon XP 2400
1 GIG of not-as-fast-as-it-could-be DDR ram
7200 RPM drives (120-200 GB, 9 each)
The latest stand-alone Main Concept MPG encoder.
Excellent MPG Calculator: http://www.videoproductions.com.au/dvd-lab/BITCALC104.ZIP

The 1.4 MPG encoder processes in slightly-faster-than-real-time. This is the biggest botle-neck of all. On my machine, the 1.4 encoder is significantly faster than Vegas's MC encoder.

Rendering all audio to AC3 from Vegas + MC's 1.4 encoder yield very, very good quality in a very fast time.

All I can say is that I wish I would have done this a LOT sooner.

So, if you're wondering if you should pre-render...well...you should.