I have a fairly straightforward project, with a mask track and two source tracks, all in HDV format.

I am rendering to Cineform HDV intermediate - however, it seems to be taking over one hour to render 6 minutes of video.

Is this normal? What are typical HDV -> Cineform intermediate render times?

It is very difficult to answer that question because some effects take a long time to render and some do not. Did you use the Cineform effects where available? That makes it faster I believe.

Surely the editing system's CPU, memory and hard disk configuration would also have an impact on the time an export will take?

Sure. That makes a huge difference as well.

Typically we are one of the faster formats to export to, so the sounds like a old system or some heavy effects on that timeline.

Well, I'm using AMD Athlon 64 X2 (4400), on a system with 2GB RAM and 2 SATA II drives internally. Generally, rendering to MPEG2 from HDV on this system is usually about 4x playtime of the final video.

What should a straight-across transcode of HDV to Cineform take (roughly)?

What should a straight-across transcode of HDV to Cineform take (roughly)?

Using HDLink to do the conversion on a PC like yours, near 1:1 real-time. We have a very fast encoder (threaded for as many cores available.)

I have a much slower system. Only 3.06GHz with 1.5G RAM.

I created a new project and put a few Cineform AVIs on the sequence in Premiere Pro 2.0 with the latest Aspect HD (not the beta) totalling 2 minutes. (00;02;00;03 drop frame)

I didn't add it to the project, and I didn't embed the project. I did export the audio. There were no transitions or any effects applied at all, so no red line to eliminate with a render.

I used the Cineform HD Export and unchecked Recompress. I did not Optimize Stills.

3600 frames rendered out to a new movie in 6:18 - or a little over 3X realtime. Not too shabby. Although I have to wonder what is happening other than just stitching the clips together? Why not a lot closer to realtime?

Yep, my results are comparable. A much simpler 50 second clip, with only a crop operation applied, took 3 minutes to render.

This maybe a shot in the dark, but...When you render, did you accidentally uncheck the render loop region only box? I've done that before and which resulted in long render times. I have a 3ghz/1gb RAM/dedicated video drive machine and it takes 5-6x realtime for render. The only effect I have used that takes so long is Magic Bullet.