Originally Posted by Jim_Gunn

First you need a super fast pc for editing and encoding HDV or HD. I recommend an Intel Core2Quad processor for video editing and rendering & encoding. Also I never encode my final files (WMV, QT, MPEG etc) directly from my editing app, because a) editing apps often work too slow compared to a professional 3rd party video encoding app like Cleaner XL or Sorenson Squeeze, b) you can't do a batch process to do multiple frame sizes and bitrates at once, and c) you don't have the same level of control as you do with a full featured app, incl. for de-interlacing, adding watermarks and other filters.. You generally don't want to use use the default encoding profiles in your editing app, as they will likely take forever depending on the settings. At least in Premiere Pro, the better quality default profiles aren't set up with a first time user in mind and won't make any sense to use as they are!