That sounds crazy slow. Look into what flags you're using, and choose a setting that reduces CPU in exchange for compressing less.
All the major codecs have flags for you to balance speed against quality and compression, and it's up to you to pick the right tradeoffs for your use case.
And for most purposes, you want to use software encoders because they're much more flexible in terms of flags/options than hardware encoders. (Hardware encoders are usually optimized for speed rather than quality -- they're for live capture more then for video conversion.)
All the major codecs have flags for you to balance speed against quality and compression, and it's up to you to pick the right tradeoffs for your use case.
And for most purposes, you want to use software encoders because they're much more flexible in terms of flags/options than hardware encoders. (Hardware encoders are usually optimized for speed rather than quality -- they're for live capture more then for video conversion.)