From reading other posts after searching, I think I know the answer to my problem already, but I'd like to be sure before I spend the $$$ to upgrade my video card (currently an ATI Radeon 7500 w/64M) or downgrade back to 7.5.

I updated to EMC 9.0 after uninstalling 7.5 and not changing any HW. Now, encoding takes about 4 hours where it used to take about an hour, maybe 2 with the same HW using EMC 7.5. I am capturing RAW video from my mini-DV camcorder, than using that video in myDVD to create a simple DVD (picked a menu, added my one captured video to it and tried to burn it).

After reading similar posts regarding encoding, it looks like 9.0 requires more horsepower from the video card because of new transitions and other fancy items. Since I'm not doing anything fancier than I did in 7.5 I would expect at least the same performance as I used to get, but now I'm forced to use SW rendering even though I'm probably not doing anything that would require more horsepower than in 7.5 when I used HW rendering and it's taking 2-4 times as long to do the same thing (encode raw video). I've tried forcing myDVD to use HW rendering, but it doesn't seem to make a difference in speed (I'm guessing the SW is switching back to SW rendering because it's smarter than me and knows what I want better than I do ).

So, my question is: is there any way for me to speed things up without buying a new video card or going back to 7.5? Thanks!

The speed of encoding mostly depends on your CPU. The faster the CPU, the faster the encoding.

I appreciate your response, but I know (or at least sincerely hope) my CPU speed didn't drop by uninstalling 7.5 and installing 9.0

No, it didn't, but the taxing of the system resources did increase with EMC 9.

"...I know (or at least sincerely hope) my CPU speed didn't drop by uninstalling 7.5 and installing 9.0 "

My suggestion is that you are correct in your assumption. Especially if you are still using the exact same hardware and not done anything to have changed any settings and are doing nothing else as far as programming or something else that might slow down the burn, when you burn your CD's.

Encoding that takes 4 hours is an enormous amount of time and even 2 hours is a lot in my experience with EMC 7.5, 8 or 9.

Frank....

Thanks for your input guys. Looks like it's time to build a new box (the systems you guys have listed make me drool for an upgrade ). My current setup (Athlon XP 2100+, Asus A7N8X, 1G Ram) is about 4 years old, so I guess I can't complain too much about its poor performance. Thanks again!