It's time-consuming because :

1) If you shoot 2 hours of miniDV footage, you have to also upload 2 hours of footage to your PC.

2)  You have to go through the uneditted video clips & cut those that are not so nice.  Then you have to arrange the clips so that the movie tells a coherent story.

3) Do some color correcting or brighten footage that was too dark, etc.

4)  You have to add transistions when necessary, & perhaps put in titles

5)  Put in some background music where appropriate

6) And finally, render the movie to VCD or DVD.  In my experience, it takes around 5 1/2  to 6 hours to render & burn about 1 1/2 hours of edited video to DVD, even on a powerful PC.

So that's why editing is so time-consuming.
Andrew

if you want the shortest time, then go and get hdd-based cams, or dvd-based cams (avoid like hell, PLEASE! but if you must....)
thanks for your advice.but i really like the ease of use of HDD cam and will buy it if i buying a cam

but why you wanna burn straight to vcd la? miniDV is like the perfect partner for dvd la, not vcd. and i havent seen any vcd recorder hardware/player or software. like you sambung the cam to the player, and press record on the player, that kinda thing. dvd recorder got la.\
miniDV to DVD got quality drop?
this one is my friend not mine,it's sony dcr-hc30e.i dont have dvd burner and most of the peeps who wants this footage only have vcd player 

but basically if all you care is vcd conversion, then it will never be 60 mins (DV tape length). its 60 mins + conversion to vcd format + burning to vcd format. conversion n burning depends on your pc hardware, and cdr speed.
it's 10-15 mins to DVD for me. Cuz I bought a four processor beast for very, very, very cheap (my friend works in Dell oz )
roughly how long is 60 mins + conversion to vcd format + burning to vcd format?
my pc quite ok...P4 2.6C,7++MB,radeon 9800,HDD still have 10GB space

If you are not concern about quality, then just get a firewire card, (your camera must have a firewire output), a software that captures mpeg1 mode, then burn them using your Nero or any other burning softwares. For a 60 mins movie you probably spend about 1 hour 20 mins to get your vcd. The fastest you can get is by using a standalone recorder which would be about 60 mins.
i have firewire port,but dont have the wire and the cams dont have firewire port too,so have to use usb.
software that captures mpeg1 mode...can give example?