Is this rendering time normal?

Question

ok, here's the set-up:
a 1.30 minute sequence with 4 tracks:
track 1: 16:9 DV footage with fisheye filter and extensive motion keys (lasts 1.30 minutes)
track 2: a still PSD image with extensive motion keys and add composite mode (lasts 5 sec.)
track 3: a still PSD image with extensive motion keys and add composite mode (lasts 1 min.)
track 4: a still PSD image with an applied mask and extensive motion keys and a 16:9 matte filter (lasts 1 min.)
(all footage and still images is located on my external LaCie FW drive)
this whole sequence gives me a render time of 55 minutes.
is this normal?
if yes, any way of speeding it up?
if no, what am i doing wrong?
I am just worried that there is some sort of bottle neck caused by something i am unaware of.
any answers out there?
cheers
-j-

Answer 1

is this normal? < </div>
Probably.
if yes, any way of speeding it up? < </div>
Yes, but they take practice and planning. When you stack up effects and moves, the pixels are rendered one at at time, looking all the way up and down the stack. You try to figure out what you can do as a pre-rendered movie and what you can combine. You also try to make sure you're not doing more work than necessary. With your hardware, scaling PSDs shouldn't be a big deal but if you do not need the huge images, yes, scale them down in PD or just export them as stills from FCP. Reimport.
Pre-rendering individual layers is probably where you gain the most efficiencies. Takes lots of planning.
It doesn't long to figure this stuff out.
bogiesan