ConvertxtoDVD- Can I do other things while it is encoding?

[PhoneMatt]

The title says it all. I've always used DVD Flick for conversion of avi to dvd, but lately, it keeps throwing weird errors. I decided to try ConvertxtoDVD. With DVD Flick, I could do non intensive things while it was encoding- Can I do the same with ConvertxtoDVD?
Thanks.

[redwudz]

That would depend on your CPU settings. If your CPU is running close to 100% on all cores during an encode, then there isn't much more you can do with it without affecting the encoding speed. H.264 does normally use all cores at 100%, depending on the version of the codec you are using. MPEG-2 isn't likely to do that. Check your Task Manager during an encode and see how much CPU you are using.

Some programs let you set the priority of the encode. Then you can do other CPU intensive things while encoding. But your encode speed will drop. Also sometimes a factor is your RAM and your hard drives. If you only have one hard drive, the boot drive, then it may be trying to do too many things at once and that can slow things down. I normally use three or four HDDs and do encoding or other operations between them. I use the boot drive only for the OS and program storage.

If your PC is set up with enough cores and they can operate separately, and you have enough RAM and HDDs, you can multitask somewhat better. But with any system, it's unlikely to be able to do two CPU intensive tasks at the same time without them affecting the speed of both.

That said, I often surf the net and play video games during encodes as long as I'm not encoding H.264 and never have any problems.

I find ConvertX very stable, much more than DVDFlick, so I would just go ahead and try it.