Faster Rendering??? (26min Vid needs 68h to render)

@Lukas, did you get a solution to the problem?

Also having same issue with rendering a music visualization in AE

Rendering time depends entirely on workflow, source footage in the composition, frame rate, effects, and your system. I have a design limit of 7 minutes per frame. If a frame takes longer than 7 minutes to render I re-design the composite.

Any time you are faced with a render that is going to take a significant amount of time it is a really good idea to render an image sequence instead of a video. If the render fails at some point you can pick up right where you left off, image sequence renders are usually significantly faster than rendering visually lossless video and almost always a lot faster than rendering compressed video (mp4 - H.264). Once you have the rendered image sequence it is a very simple task to load that up in Premiere Pro or AE, put the audio track back in the project and render the final deliverable. That is how almost all professional production studios handle complicated projects that take a long time to render.

Creating a 26-minute video all inside After Effects in a single composition tells me that you are either trying to use AE as an editing system or creating some kind of single 26-minute long visual effect like a music visualization. After Effects is designed to create shots, not edit movies. If you are indeed editing a movie in AE then, for your own sanity, break it up into short sequences. More than 90% of my AE comps are under seven seconds because most of the shots that I have in the films that I produce are less than seven seconds long. I know it sounds like more work, but it is actually more efficient, gives you more editing choices that make the end product better, and it saves you a ton of time in the long run.

A few more details about your project may help us help you shave a few minutes off your render time, but without those details, most suggestions are just throwing common sense solutions up against the wall and hoping one of them will stick.

i totally agree with @imeilfx suggestion, you can tweak your composition to reduce the render time, so don't use oversize photo incase you use photo, try to resize it in photoshop to fit your composition size so don't scale it in AE, check your effects and remove unnecessary effects, work on HD instead of 4K incase you need fast render.......

That is not enough information to tell you exactly what can be the issue but most often it would be:
- rendering with ame straight to mp4
- using to large images in smal composition
- using to much expressions - here converting expressions to keyframes should help
So my advice would be:
a) everywhere where you have expressions use Learn expression basics to link animations in Adobe After Effects

b) render your composition using AE Render Queue not AME queue

c) convert to image sequence or decent intermediate codec (animation/mov, prores, cineform, DNxHD) and then that file using AME convert to mp4
d) if you overclock your workstation - overclock single core higher and add AE rendering as a priority to that core (in AE most of effects are single thread so it is much better to have cpu with less cores and higher clock speed than bunch of cores with lower clocks.

And if that project is not made by you but a teplate and you don't know how that tempate works - send us that project for inspection.