MR650 Most of the free or shareware transcoding products you will see for the Mac will use the x.264 codec and often something like ffmpeg as the encoding front end. x.264 is notoriously slow on PowerPC machines. If you want to export useful video, for the sake of argument 640x480/640x36(0/8), h.264, with support for your computer, all ipods, iphone, ps3, etc, then you want to use something like the legacy ipod settings in handbrake. On a G5 consumer machine you can expect something like 7-15 frames per second (your mileage may vary). On any intel machine you can expect between 25-50 frames per second (consumer models). If you need to convert video then I recommend getting an intel based machine, if this is not possible then consider purchasing one of the older elgato turbo.264 USB sticks. The turbo.264 (not the HD) can be found on places like amazon for around $75 today. The HD appears to require an intel machine. The turbo.264 should improve encoding time on a PowerPC to be on par with, if not faster than an intel machine using x.264 based encoders. The problem with the turbo.264 is that the quality of output is similar to Apple's Quicktime h.264 encoder or the iTunes in-built converter. You will see artifacts, but waiting 6 hours for a video to be processed for general use on a PPC machine is just a waste of time. The same arguments about quality of video apply to the elgato products and toast, but the turbo.264 HD churns out a respectable 110 fps average on my 2.53 Macbook Pro so it's good for the occasional encode. Dedicated Hardware = > realtime intel + turbo.264 HD = full processor usage AND turbo boost. For the record, the old turbo should let you use your computer without running up the processor (good because there wasn't much point to using the processor in the PPCs), the new one runs at 200%.
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