Ways to speed up windows movie maker saving time?

It might but you have plenty of computing power. If your final target is YouTube get your files smaller early on. Use shorter clips, and downsize them earlier in the process. Learn how to use a frameserver during the initial conversions so you don't tie up all your cpu and can perform other tasks.

im just creating music videos

just an image for the cover art and then i add the track and save the file.

I cant really downsize the files anymore

An SSD drive will speed it up noticeably. Don't believe me, try it

You want my opinion? Stop using windows movie maker. I don't have that problem with power director. Its my prefered way of making videos. I am able to save an mp4 within 2 mins then upload it to youtube. I only have an intel dual core, so if you have an I5 processor (which is a lot quicker) you're problem shouldnt' be your specs imo. In fact an I5 processor should be enough for A LOT of things. I do music production which taxes my CPU like nothing else I can think of, and an I5 would be beyond fast enough for some serious tasks.

I don't think the issue is your processor. Unless you have a virus you're not aware of viruses will slow down your computer regardless of its specs.

Could it be the file you're rendering? I think avi files will take a lot longer to process than an mp4 file. I don't know but obviously some files render quicker. All I know is I use power director and render as mp4 and this has never been a problem for me, processing and saving is very fast, so maybe you should check it out!

G/luck - Red

Ive found a way around it.

Basically because the video just have one stationary image (the cover art for the track) i can lower the bit rate for the video to the lowest possible setting.

I can still keep the audio bit rate at 256kbps and the result is a much smaller video file and saving time.

example -