How to speed up Blender Video Sequence Editor rendering? When rendering a simple video in FullHD right now (one video track, one audio track), the encoding process takes about one second per frame. Let's say I'd like to render a 5-minute clip in 24fps:

5*60*24 = 7200 frames

1s per frame = 7200/60 = 120 minutes of rendering time.

It seems very slow to me. Is there a way to speed up this process? Mabye use different codec? Or maybe I should render to RAW file and then encode it using an external tool? Right now I'm using x.264 coded with default settings.
Using only colored effect strips and a track of music, I rendered 240 frames resulting in the following export times:
H264 = 16 secs
MP4  = 14 secs
xvid = 13 secs

This tests only the encoding engine. I would also suggest checking the dimensions of the media you are editing with. Any scaling (which the VSE will do automatically) impacts on render time. Try to make this 1:1 with the scene dimensions. Further to the issue of scaling you may want to alter the AntiAliasing value in the scene properties as well. Default is 8 samples.

Finally, in User Prefs, increase the 'sequencer cache' value to maximise your memory usage. And check that you are using the Sound Output Device SDL, in the same panel.