final cut express 4 has gotten slow any ideas?

[rangerfreak1]

i have a mac pre 2.26ghz and i run final cut express on it,the program ran great until recently.redering time before was 2hrs now when i try it says 8 and the filmstip loads way way slower.is my mac messed up or is this some kind of program error.any ideas?

 

[rangerfreak1]

it seems to do better with .mov files but when i try to use a .avi file rendering and everything else is really slow

 

[rangerfreak1]

is this normal?

 

[rangerfreak1]

i think iv narrowed the problem down to handbreak. when i convert with handbreak the file produced makes fce slow but when i convert with amerisoft dvd ripper it comes out just fine but amerisoft is alot slower than handbreak,is there any way to fix handbreak since it is much faster?