kernel panic between 9 & 13% encoding

[DutchBassoonDuo]

Hello,
I am running Mac OS 10.3.8 with Developer Tools installed.
I have been test-driving ffmpegX for a couple of weeks and love it, but I started getting a kernel panic / hold down the power button to reboot message. It was working so well. I have reformated & zeroed every drive, then reinstalled 10.3 (and nothing else) and still the problem persists. It does not seem to matter what type of encodings I do, either.
I'm mostly surprised that after erasing everything, nothing has changed. Perhaps I'm missing something in the ffmpegX instal process. I have not found anything about a kernel panic on the forum, so if this has never happened to anyone else my problem probably has nothing to do with ffmpegX.
On a hunch I saved the text of this message and tried encoding in MPEG2Works, and the same thing happened.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you.
Stephen

[major]

A kernel panic may not be linked to ffmpegX, or a specific application which has no repeted behavior of such issues over many users. It may indicate hardware problems, if you're sure that your OSX install is perfect.

Check the following FAQ for directions : http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/kernelpanics.html