Okay, I figured it out myself so I'll leave this here if it's useful for someone. If you have an Nvidia card (RTX 40/50 series for AV1), just go to Video Export and set it up like this:
- Export Type: Create Video (MP4)
- Codec: AV1 (or av1_nvenc)
- Hardware Acceleration / Use GPU: Enabled
- Video Quality: Set between 20 and 30
- Encoding Preset: Quality
I went from 40-minute renders + manually converting images, to now rendering a perfect MP4 video in just 4 minutes with flawless quality. (Wish I knew this earlier lol)
[ IMPORTANT ] If it gives you an error or doesn't work with AV1, it's because your plugin's encoder is outdated. You just have to download the latest Windows build from
ffmpeg.org (Gyan.dev) and replace the ffmpeg.exe file located in your BepInEx/plugins/VideoExport/ folder. Make sure the file is named exactly ffmpeg.exe.