Green Screen Work flow Speed

I have a mac/ cs5 and multiple green screen shots for a project.

My computer renders AE files very slowly. ( I wanted to get the monotonous, grunt work out of the way now and clean up the green screens, which involved masking etc.) I hate that part i want to sit and edit and be creative.

So now I have a dynamic linked project, with the render time projecting at 30 hours: i dont want to wait. The AE footage still needs cutting up.

What I would throw the ae clips over the project and cut and then do the render at the end: is there a way to just have the AE clips be at very low quality so there is no wait or lag?

Or is there a huge piece of the workflow I'm missing? Help! thanks!

Thanks Stephen, i've still got footage to shoot and add so i don't know what i will need.. I really just want all the grunt work out of the way now, i hate hate hate hate hate sitting in front of my computer watching grass grow, i seriously don't see how people can do this.. plus ive already dynamically linked the project which i guess i cant undo

I really just want to see my footage playing at normal time in premiere, i don't care what it looks like, so i can cut it and edit it creatively and efficiently, i also just tried lowering resolution playback..didn't work

thanks for your help

Thanks stephen I knew i screwed this up. I am using all the green screen clips just not the whole clip. i'm using 7 seconds of it here, 12 seconds there, and my thinking was it would be easier to do all the keying and masking on one big clip rather than splitting it up into different clips all over the project and then exporting the project back to AE and searching through all the clips in the project (which look alike) to match up the same green screen clips to copy and paste attributes through multiple layers.

Thanks again

Stephen i really appreciate your help, but I just think i have to be missing something, unless this is a Mecca that everyone is seeking to do.

I have about 100 green screen clips, that i will probably scatter all over a project into around 600 clips. Each lighting was different so of course keying will be different on each of the 100 setups. when i scatter them all over the project i will have to track down each clip to copy and paste the attributes, which could take...a long time. I wanted the keying to be as simple and possible, so i did this first before i chopped them up and and scattered them.

Now i have to:
hunt and peck the clips
or wait 30 hours for a render
or suffer through watching my computer churn out one clip after another.

I was hoping for another, thanks for the info.. i learned a valuable lesson