'Performing XMP Processing'

This project of mine keeps getting plagued with this long and unavaoidable stage of encoding, where it tries to imbue the file with XMP even if I choose to include no metadata.
This happens across any version of the software I try, and seems to be attached to the sequence, even when imported into new projects.
The only instance I can find of someone experiencing this is someone on reddit who was never answered.
This has made a recent delivery *hell*.
Ryzen 5800x
GTX 5070ti latest drivers
