Rendering time ridiculously long

I have a 55 minute video that I've been trying to save for the past 8 hours now.  It went from 57 minutes and crashing to over 1.2 hour and now it shows a rendering of over 2 hours.

Using windows laptop saving in the youtube 720p HD preset.  

This is extremeky frustrating and an totally inefficient use of my time. Can anyone recommend a workaround?