Batch video conversion: Windows becomes slow/sluggish/unresponsive

[Stoic18]

Hi all,

I am new to this forum and I have looked for several hours to find a similar situation that I am experiencing. So far I have not found anything via Google or on this forum. Therefore I decided to register on this forum and share my experience.

I have a very peculiar problem. When I perform a batch conversion, typically from WMV to MP4 with standard settings, of, say 10 files, each with size around 600 MB, the conversion itself goes well. However, after the batch has successfully finished, Windows becomes slow/sluggish/unresponsive. I.e., starting any application, even as simple as the Windows Explorer, takes around 20 to 30 seconds. I did not dare to start something big, such as a game, as I suspect it would take ages to start... and even then, I suspect it would be very slow.

The strange thing is that there is rarely any CPU usage (around 1-2%) and also I do not see any evident hard disk activity. And I have a decent config: Windows 7, 16 GB RAM, intel i7 2600K, SSD with OS and a second HDD. I have plenty of free space on both drives. Memory utilization during and after conversion does not go over 4Gb.

One thing worth mentioning perhaps is that I turned off the page-file (as, so far, I have never been able to fill up the whole 16GB!). Other than that nothing fancy, like overclocking or the likes. I do have hyper-threading on; I may bother to turn it off to see if that helps, even though it would decrease the performance of the conversion.

I have this problem with several programs that I ran the same batch with: Freemake Video Converter, Tencoder, Handbrake and DVDFab.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue? For now, the only remedy is to reboot, which is not a deal breaker, but a nuisance nonetheless.

Cheers,
Stoic

[transporterfan]

Yes. A couple of people using products incorporating MEncoder with Windows 7 have noticed a problem. Don't know why.
Use TEncoder with FFmpeg and let me know if the problem persists.

[ozok]

Maybe your CPU gets too hot and it limits its speed? I'm no expert on that but once, while I was testing TX264 -I mean hours of encoding-, my pc reboot itself. I downloaded one of these CPU monitoring programs and saw that my CPU got way too hot (I don't remember now, but I think safety limit was 99 celsius for my i7). After opening the case and cleaning everything, it returned to normal, no more reboots. I don't know if cleaning stopped reboots but it surely lowered CPU temp.

[Stoic18]

I actually have used ffmpeg with all these programs.

[Stoic18]

Maybe your CPU gets too hot and it limits its speed?

The temperature does not go beyond 55 degrees Celsius (recorded it with Asus AI Suite II). I have decent cooling and, as said, have not overclocked.

[transporterfan]

Turning hyper-threading off wont hurt the conversion by much. In fact, sometimes it can help the system speed because the number of logical cores are not recalibrated until after reboot. It depends which programs utilise the method, and how.

http://bitsum.com/pl_when_hyperthreading_hurts.php

[Stoic18]

Sure, I'll try without hyper-threading and see how that turns out. Thanks.

[Stoic18]

I turned hyper-threading off and the problem indeed disappeared! I ran the same batch in both Handbrake and TEncoder (even one after another) and I none of the issues I experienced earlier happened this time.
Besides, the overall time of the batch was actually similar compared to with hyper-threading on.

So, encoding/converting with hyper-threading might be faster for a single file, but for a batch something makes the whole system unresponsive.
It's worth mentioning that I did not experience similar issues with hyper-threading, when running load programs such as Prime95 for hours and hours. So the batch encoding/conversion in combination with hyper-threading somehow causes the system to become slow.

In any case, my problem is resolved. Thanks for all the hints!