Media Encoder running incredibly slow

Hi all, my first post and I'm hoping for some support as I have another really difficult issue to solve; but starting with this one...

I'm exporting a 2min film from Premiere Pro as follows:

Sequence settings: AVC-Intra 100 1080p 23.976 fps

Exporting: Match Source Adaptive High Bit Rate, H.264, Max Depth, Max Render, VBR-2pass

File size is approx. 249mb

Using Macbook Pro M3 Max, 36GB Memory, Sonoma 14.6.1.

All Premiere Pro/Adobe/Media Encoder, etc. are all bang up to date.

I have been trying to use Media Encoder as I need multiple versions.. bugged, clean, different branding, etc. and Media Encoder is usually anticipating a 50minute - 1x hour export time PER UNIT but crashing after 10 minutes (I have reinstalled twice after 2x crashes). If I export directly via my mac it takes less than 2x minutes.

Clearly I have the 'workaround' but why has ME suddenly become absolutely redundant? Has anyone else experienced ME issues - is it an update?