S-U-P-E-R S-L-O-W

I started a free trial of ME yesterday. It takes 5 times as long to encode the same video as when I encode directly from PP. Same settings. I have read that people get good results with downgrading to an earlier version. How can I do this? I am in the process of re-editing about 180 videos with PP. I loved thart ME could run in the background while I continue to edit another project. Although, it hardly runs. HELP!