Hi
I am afraid that a long video takes simply a long time to process (does with my PC anyway
) Just completed a 1 1/2 hour holiday "epic" which took HOURS (more than overnight!) to render as an avi before transferring to a DVD. Normally I cut films down to 30 or 40 mins but family requirements on this occasion meant everything had to be included!
However the synch problem with MPEG4 means I convert my raw camera clips to MPEG 2 clips before I start editing. Even for this long film of several hundred clips the conversion of the clips didn't take THAT long.
Any video converter (freeware) will allow you add all your clips to a list and will then convert them one at a time to any one of a selection of formats, placing the result in a designated folder but conserving the original. You can stop it at any time. Its reasonably fast...depends of the parameters you set and the size of the original clip.
http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/
Its worth giving it a try.
Nat