When I encode with x264, can I do other cpu demanding stuff?

[simps]

Can I safetly open other programs, watch movies, play games (not fps demanded) etc, and do all things that will also demand from the hardware?

My question is, is there any chance of the encoder to mess up with some frames for example, or not to do its job the right way, if I do other things with the computer, during the encoding?

Or is it totally safe to do that?

[]'s
Simps

[roozhou]

Sure, set x264.exe's process priority to Low in Task Manager.

[burfadel]

Yeah! You can even play heavy fps games since they're running in normal priority and x264 at low. Just means the encode will take longer! :)

I've even played GTA IV when encoding, and that thing is a pig when it comes to resources.

[Chengbin]

Of course you can!

I've encoded 1080p videos and played CoD 4 at the same time! The encoding just takes longer.

[Manao]

I've even played GTA IV when encoding, and that thing is a pig when it comes to resources.Strange. I have had no problem encoding and playing at the same time for all the games I have played except for GTA IV. That one - at least on my setup - seems somehow to adapt rendering quality according to CPU usage and memory usage, and encoding with x264 in the background (at the minimal priority) was creating rendering issues (disappearing textures mostly).

[burfadel]

There's lots of bugs with GTA IV, the current latest patch v1.0.3.0 is significantly better than early revisions. GTA IV is a bad port, its performance vs quality is very low. It is also much more CPU intensive than most games. I have 4gb of ram + Vista x64, I think that helps a lot. A lot of people have 4gb of ram (6gb in the case of Core i7's), and run XP 32 bit. This limits RAM to around 3.3GB. Worst still, if you have a 1gb video card, which is almost a requirement these days for high resolution in the latest games, I think it cuts you back further to around 2.8GB (as the 1gb of vid mem is allocated instead of 512mb, plus other devices etc).

With 4gb and x64, x264+avisynth can use so the MB of memory required and not affect the texture space in main memory of GTA IV. Hence, supposedly no missing textures. The original GTA IV was shocking, some people even with 4gb of ram, q9550, Radeon 4870/or GTX 280's, doesn't matter whether vista/XP/x64, they couldn't run it even on low res. Those specs were an example, I've heard of complaints even from higher specs than that on the original revision! This has been significantly improved over the time of the patches. Definitely don't use anything but v1.0.3.0 at the moment (use a newer one when it becomes available), and use the latest display driver for your card. Earlier patches actually introduced missing things in the game (I think it was v1.0.2.0).

With your graphics card, tweak it with the latest nhancer if you have an Nvidia card, or SKD STT 5.3 (or later if available) for ATI. With SKD, you can enable everything on recent cards on the first page except 'pixel center' (centre), and load adjustment. Under 'More d3d settings' do not enable 'Use scissor enable'. it can cause problems with aero. For opengl, everything except disable agp blit and 'oglwaitverticalsync'.

Under 'extra settings', enable multi threading (auto), atmalphafix (auto), agp texture micro tiling, and everything in the second and third rows.

This will give you the best performance for Ati cards. Just means if you did have slight problems with encoding + gaming before, you shouldn't now. Also may help with the gta issue ;)

Apparently the CCC and Ati tray tools (which is less featured) stuffs those settings up. But, the CCC sucks anyway! lol

Actually just enable 'edge detect' antialiasing in ccc, then set the rest AFTER with SKD STT

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yet another reason to run x64 with more than 4gb of RAM :)

I constantly encode 1080p x264 and play WoW at the same time. No problems whatsoever.

~MiSfit