Video encoding speed slower than previously

[genak]

I'm in the process of converting several DVDs and converting them to x264 using Handbrake. Depending on the exact settings used, I usually get an encoding speed of approx. 20 - 30 fps on my machine (Windows Vista SP2, 2 GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo 1.80 GHz), but a few days ago the speed approximately halved to about 10 fps and hasn't changed since. Nothing else on my laptop seems to have slowed down particularly, but then I don't really do anything else CPU-intensive on my laptop anyway.

The only thing I noticed that is odd is that in the Windows Task Manager the memory usage never surpasses about 55% and on the graph in the image below is a flat line, which to me suggests that the rest of the memory can't be accessed - is this a problem?

[redwudz]

I wouldn't worry too much about RAM usage. Encoding is CPU intensive, not RAM intensive. Most of that used RAM is probably for other programs on the computer. My RAM usage on my laptop at present is about 1.4GB and CPU close to zero at idle.

Your CPU usage is about right, but for most of my H.264 encodes, it stays at 100% most of the time. Have you installed any programs in the last few days?
Tried a test re-encode of an older file that encoded at 20 - 30fps previously? Differences in files might be the problem.

From there, maybe a restore to a point before the problems, or a uninstall and reinstall of Handbrake and the H.264 codec if it's not included.