thanks Jim - I've tried with vm on and off - not much difference. I've read from other news groups that all metcreations programs run very slowly on G4's (Bryce, Canoma et. al) especially when rendering. I've contacted metacreations with this problem - so I'll post a message here when (or if!) I get a reply - once again thanks for all your replies.

Thanks for all your replies - Poser on the G4 has 200meg assigned to it - as for the compression - I've tried rendering with different compression settings but there's not much difference. Incidently, the scene I"m trying to render consists of a single poser figure - I'm rendering at 768 x 576 @ 25fps (PAL format) - the PII is rendering at one frame every 20-25 secs and the G4 is rendering at one frame every 45secs - 1minute!