iMovie 09 encoding speeds and modal dialogs?

Hey guys, I have a couple of questions for people with iMovie 09.

First off, have they improved the encoding speeds? It's not exactly thrilling to have iMovie 08 take 5 mins to encode a 1 min clip on an 8-core Mac Pro.

Second, when you publish videos, does it still have the modal dialog which prevents you from working on any other projects? Again, not very effective to have to wait 30 mins for a clip to upload when I could be working with my other projects that whole time.