Exporting Settings (Premiere Pro CS4 with Matrox)

Question

Premiere Pro CS4
Canon XHG1 camera (HDV/Mini DV/NTSC)
Matrox RT.X2
HP Z800 with 2.4GHz Intel Xeon processor, 12GB RAM, and running Windows 7
I have experience with digital video editing in Premiere, exporting up to 40-minute videos (that took maybe 2 hours to export), but the last version I used was maybe Premiere 7 and I didn’t have the Matrox card (and was using a computer much less capable than this one). I was also just using a consumer-level camera, not the big Canon. Now I’m trying to export video and there are way more choices than I had before, and it seems like the estimated time to export is quite high, despite having a good machine and the Matrox card.
So my question is, is there a chart anywhere that says what settings to use for the particular output you are looking for? For instance, what should I pick for the web that is good enough quality but not a giant file? What should I pick if I want to make a DVD? Is there a way to directly export to a DVD if you aren’t manipulating the video at all? I’ve been told I should be able to utilize the Matrox card to reduce the export time, but it seems like it takes at least 5 times the length of the video to export no matter what.
I guess an important question here is, what is the normal amount of time I should expect something to take to export? I have a 2-hour video that just needs to be transferred from the mini DV tapes and burned to a DVD – no effects necessary. The lowest export time estimate I can get is around 10 hours, and I have no idea what that will look like in terms of quality when done.
In the future I will be doing mostly short (2 minutes or less) videos for web, so export time should be short, but I’d still like to know what the best settings are and how long it should take.
I hope this makes sense – thanks for your help!
Genevieve

Answer 1

Thanks for your help. I have copied and pasted my results below. It seemed to get through that queue very quickly, so perhaps the slowness is do to something more specific in the project I am working on. Perhaps a large mismatch in what I am capturing vs. what I am exporting? The camera is recording in HD.... I don't know much about hardware at all, and only know very basic stuff about exporting, so I know it is probably difficult to understand what I'm looking for. The last version of Premiere I had basically allowed you to choose format, size, quality, and codec whereas this version has so many different export settings I can pick from, it is hard to just guess and check which ones work best.
Hewlett Packard,  Computer Manufacturer
HP Z800 Workstation,   Computer Model
132.2,  secs Total Benchmark Time
32,  secs AVI  Encoding Time
46.2,  secs MPEG Elapsed Time
54,  secs Rendering Time
Intel,    CPU Manufacturer
Xeon E5530,    CPU Model
2.40,    GHz CPU speed
1,    Number of CPU chips
4,    Total Number of Cores
12GB,    GB RAM
Premiere Pro CS4,    APP Version PPBM4 DV
Win 7 (64),    OSVersion
SAS,    OS Disk Interface
500xR1E,    GB OS Disk Capacity
15,000,    OS Disk Speed
Same as OS,    Project Disk Interface
Same as OS,    GB Project Disk Capacity
Same as OS,    Project Disk Speed
Same as OS,    Preview Disk Interface
Same as OS,    GB Preview Disk Capacity
Same as OS,    Preview Disk Speed
Same as OS,    Output Disk Interface
Same as OS,    GB Output Disk Capacity
Same as OS,    Output Disk Speed
NVidia Quadro FX 1800,    Graphics Board
Using a Matrox RT.X2 Capture Card,    Comment