Best Mac for fast video encoding?

Wondering which Mac may be the best choice for fast (at at least faster) encoding of video files and creation of disc image and then burning a dvd disc. I'm doing home videos with my digital camera, about 50 minutes long.
On my Dual 1ghz G4 PM, it seems to take forever, maybe 6-8 hours. Anyone know or can quess how long it takes for the new iMac Core 2 duo versus a low end Mac Pro?

on my antiqué hard/software (450Mega!Hz, 1GB RAM, 10.3.) combo, iDVD encoding needs 8 - 10x of the length of project... (1h project= 8h encoding)
sooo, to improve speed:
* make sure, you're within specs of iApps - avoid compressed material, stay with .DV encoded video, .aiff encoded audio, .pic encoded stills...
* make sure, you have at last 10 - 15GB free on internal drive (ext. doesn't matter for this issue)
* make sure, all project data are located on internal drive
* … if not, make sure ext. drive is firewire connected and formatted to "MacOsExtended/hfs"...
* avoid other CPU/harddrive consuming tasks, as ripping CDs, rendering 4D animations, Spotlight indexing...
I've seen überMacs, Intel quads/4GBRam, encoding in less then realtime...
if you don't need fancy iDVD menus, playout movie (=realtime...) to some DVD/Harddrive standalone as from Pioneer (<<link to commercial website!), my 520 does the (hardware accelerated) encoding/burning of 1h video in about 5-10minutes...

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