Encoding takes too long (which is the fastest?)

[avidemoxie]

I have an i7 laptop. Right now am encoding an hour-long video, a 1 GB MKV file. Btw, I am not using my PC to do anything else during the encoding. It has taken 45 minutes and it's almost done. Is this normal?

More info: The video is a screen recording of me video chatting with my teacher.  I used the H264 video codec; specifically, Mpeg4 AC (x264) video output. Only one pass (constant bitrate, 350kbit/s). One video resizing filter. Audio output is Mp3/lame. Output format is Mkv muxer.

The odd thing is I remember using the same settings before on my old PC and that taking half the time it does on the new PC. So it is perplexing.

I'm looking for a way that this take less time without major loss of quality. I know very little about Avidemux but the time issue got me looking at other settings so if you have any suggestions to cut the time, I appreciate you sharing.

[dosdan]

Only one pass (constant bitrate, 350kbit/s).

What framesize are you resizing it to, and what framerate? 350Kb/s is a ridiculously low bit-rate for video encoding unless the framesize is small.

Also why CBR? x264 achieves a better quality-vs-filesize balance when using CRF. Depending on how low small is the resized framesize, try using a Q (quality) of 30+.

https://slhck.info/video/2017/03/01/rate-control.html
https://slhck.info/video/2017/02/24/crf-guide.html

Dan.