12 hours to render? is that normal?

Question

I have a G5 dual 2.7GHZ machine with 8GB of RAM. 250GB internal drive with 140GB available space, 500GB external Lacie drive with 300GB available space. and I keep all my project files on the external drive when I work on any project.
So, I recently finished an edit that was 28 minutes, 30 seconds. it was an infomercial, so it had a lower third overlay during the entire edit, a few transitions, but mostly cuts, and a few filters on some shots, nothing too intense. I rendered the sequence which took a few hours, not sure.
then I exported to compressor for DVD, and chose the 90 minute option with one pass- faster encode. 4 hours have elapsed, and I have 8 hours to go.
is that normal?
I've been using FCP5 for the first time on a new G5 for a few months now, and all the projects that I've rendered out for DVD so far, I just exported and walked away, and usually came in the next day and it was done, so I never really monitored rendering time until now. I upgraded from a G4 500MHZ single processor using Premiere 6.5, and my render times were not nearly that long. I was thinking that with a G5 that was nearly 8 times as fast, my render time would be much shorter, only it got longer. I love FCP5 much more than Premiere, and OSX is great, but render times are just insane.
again, from the info that I provided, should my render times be that long, or am I doing something wrong?
thanks for any insight anyone can give.

Answer 1

checked my settings, and I had it set to normal.
while I had that window open, I clicked on the Render Control Tab, and noticed that under Render & Playback, all three options were checked- Filters, Frame Blending For Speed, and Motion Blur. could this be a reason? and if I unchecked say Filters, would that mean, it would render the sequence without any filters I had applied?
one other problem I have been having just this week with this particular project is that FCP seems to be running really slow. other programs run normal, so I'm pretty sure its an issue specific to FCP. for example, just now when I had the sequence settings window open, and I was click on the tabs, from video processing to render control, there was a hesitation before it would display the tab. Its like driving on flat tires or something. and at this time, I have no other program open except Safari, so its not like I"m taxing my resources. what could cause FCP to bog down?
thanks for your help.