System Overhead while running DVDFlick

[harishkumar09]

I have a Dell Inspiron i3, dual core, 2.53 Ghz each, and 2.87 GB usable RAM, Windows 7 64-bit OS.

I want to know if I can watch a movie on VLC while DVDFlick is encoding at "below normal" priority
and "thread count" is set to 2.

Will the encoding be affected or will it slowdown considerably?

[Baldrick]

Try???

The encoding quality wont be affected....just the encoding time. How much depends on the video source you are playing and if you are using graphic hardware acceleration/overlay.

[Hoser Rob]

I suspect vlc playback quality might suffer. But the encoding quality, no. It'll just take a lot longer.

[harishkumar09]

Thanks Baldrick and Hoser Rob. Yes, you were right, the encoding took longer. I don't think the quality was affected.

[jagabo]

Why would the encoding quality suffer? Encoding is like any other non-realtime process. You wouldn't expect your spreadsheet calculations to be wrong while watching a movie, would you? Or your word document to be all messed up? Adding 2+2 will give 4 whether it's performed in a nanosecond or one second. If that isn't true on a system there is something seriously wrong with it.

The type of processes that suffer are realtime processes. Video capture, for example. A new frame of video arrives every 33 ms (at 30 fps). If the CPU isn't available to handle the frame it may be lost.

[harishkumar09]

Why would the encoding quality suffer? Encoding is like any other non-realtime process. You wouldn't expect your spreadsheet calculations to be wrong while watching a movie, would you? Or your word document to be all messed up? Adding 2+2 will give 4 whether it's performed in a nanosecond or one second. If that isn't true on a system there is something seriously wrong with it.

The type of processes that suffer are realtime processes. Video capture, for example. A new frame of video arrives every 33 ms (at 30 fps). If the CPU isn't available to handle the frame it may be lost.

I agree jagabo, I do my find my question to be silly. Its just going to take longer, the calculation will take some more time as it waits for a free CPU cycle. How stupid of me!

[harishkumar09]

Why would the encoding quality suffer? Encoding is like any other non-realtime process. You wouldn't expect your spreadsheet calculations to be wrong while watching a movie, would you? Or your word document to be all messed up? Adding 2+2 will give 4 whether it's performed in a nanosecond or one second. If that isn't true on a system there is something seriously wrong with it.

The type of processes that suffer are realtime processes. Video capture, for example. A new frame of video arrives every 33 ms (at 30 fps). If the CPU isn't available to handle the frame it may be lost.

But then what happens when you are doing something CPU intensive (like watching a movie or encoding a DVD using DVDFlick at "above normal" priority) and burning a DVD using ImgBurn? Since movie data has to be transferred to a buffer and then written to DVD which is spinning at a particular rate, if the data are not made available fast enough, then would it be correct to expect errors while burning? Or will the spinning of the DVD be slowed down to cope with less numbers of data being available to burn?

In simpler words, is DVD burning a real time process, dependent upon timely availability of data?

[jagabo]

But then what happens when you are doing something CPU intensive (like watching a movie or encoding a DVD using DVDFlick at "above normal" priority) and burning a DVD using ImgBurn? Since movie data has to be transferred to a buffer and then written to DVD which is spinning at a particular rate, if the data are not made available fast enough, then would it be correct to expect errors while burning?

Possibly, burning a DVD is a realtime process.

Or will the spinning of the DVD be slowed down to cope with less numbers of data being available to burn?

DVD burners have ways of dealing with this. Basically, they pause the burning process until more data is available. But it's safest not to rely on that.

[harishkumar09]

But then what happens when you are doing something CPU intensive (like watching a movie or encoding a DVD using DVDFlick at "above normal" priority) and burning a DVD using ImgBurn? Since movie data has to be transferred to a buffer and then written to DVD which is spinning at a particular rate, if the data are not made available fast enough, then would it be correct to expect errors while burning?

Possibly, burning a DVD is a realtime process.

Or will the spinning of the DVD be slowed down to cope with less numbers of data being available to burn?

DVD burners have ways of dealing with this. Basically, they pause the burning process until more data is available. But it's safest not to rely on that.

Thank You!