DVD rendering times

[gvm]

I have a very fast system (2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM etc) and use Pinnacle's Studio 8 for NLE. It takes my system 3 to 3.5 hrs to render and encode one hour of video for burning to DVDs.

Studio 8 claims to real-time render special effects and transitions but whether I use it or not the required time does not change much. I understand that NLE packages in the order of $US1500 are realtime rendering systems but how much do these more expensive systems reduce production times? For example, do these systems do in one hour what it takes mine 3 to 3.5 hours to do?

Can someone clarify situation regarding realtime rendering please? Thanks,.

[theReal]

The Realtime Rendering only applies to a scenario where you render to the codec in use (mostly DV). So, you'll get a realtime preview of a DV source and you can also render a DV file in realtime.

Rendering to MPEG2 for a DVD is something different. You can only do this with a special dedicated MPEG2 hardware encoder - and it will only have a comparable quality to software encoding when you buy a really expensive hardware encoder (really not worth the money unless you're a professional DVD rendering company)
And with really expensive I don't mean 1500 USD here - I mean something like 15.000 USD and up...