Suggestion: Pause an Encode Process

[Demon]

Now that the ffmpegX Progress window is implemented (Very nice addition, by the way. Great for queueing multiple encodings.), would it be possible to add the ability to pause an encoding process? I understand this will probably be very difficult, but here's a list of pros:

1. USE CPU FOR OTHER TASKS! I often encode lengthy video into as high a quality as possible, which takes an enormous amount of time, especially on a 700 MHz machine During that time, I (and I'm sure many other people) run other apps, because I have important things to get done other than encoding. Being able to pause the encoding would make it possible to use the processor for other, more important tasks. When those are finished, encoding can be resumed right where it left off.

2. Test for video/audio synchronization before the file is done. I know you can preview files using mplayer before they're done encoding, but frames are dropped often. This makes it very difficult to tell if the video and audio is in sync (especially with lip movements). I've been frustrated in the past when I realized that after 16+ hours of encoding, my DiVX is horribly out of sync by the end because I made a mistake in the settings (wrong frame rate, wrong audio sampling, etc).

3. Test the quality of high motion scenes. Pretty much the same as above, but for picture quality. TONS of frames are dropped in high motion scenes when the file is still being encoded, and it makes it impossible to check the quality of the clip.

That's all I can think of right now, there are probably more good things about it. As far as I can tell, the only con is the amount of work it might take to implement the feature. I'm not sure how Unix would handle a task like that, or if it's even possible, but if it is, I'd say this is definitely a feature worth adding.

[snewman]

I agree with this suggestion. Pausing encoding would be a grand improvement...