Basic rendering takes hours.
I'm having the exact same issue @Mark Clarkson describes and it is independent from any extensive or memory intensive effect (because I know how much e.g. turbulence would take in average plus it takes as long to render basic animations without effects). Media Encoder gets slower and slower while rendering only 1:30 min. comps without any apparent reason. Even rendering basic PNG or JPG sequences takes over an hour for only one minute. To make matters worse After Effects freezes when closed. I just won't quit.
I think it started since I updated to version 22. Seeing that it has gotten slow I downgraded back to 18.4.1, the "condition" has persisted. Maybe updating ME only might be worth a try. The previews take long too. Its running on an i7 with 32 GB RAM, separate SSD for the media cache and preview files and a GPU with 6GB by a well known major manufacturer, that has not failed my needs in any occasion (not even playing Doom Eternal with the highest settings). Grmp.
