Maybe I'm missing something really basic here! When exporting from the Premiere timeline, the CineForm encoder is re-encoding CineForm AVIs... as the original assets are CineForm AVIs, and the clips are mostly untouched - just cut down - is there any reason why there's any encoding going on at all? Couldn't the original bitstream be used in such cases, and only new encoding done where effects/transitions etc are used?

This is the way my old Matrox Premiere kit (SD) used to work and it cut down exporting times by orders of magnitude. Is there any way to do this with CineForm and Prospect?

The lossless compressed importer to exporter transfer function actually goes away under CS4, so I glad we implemented it. :) Use project management feature to trim the files.