Encoding drops to sub 1fps when computer left idle--very strange

[fireflayer]

I actually haven't been able to complete a movie yet. Normally my encoding FPS are a little above real-time for the 1st and 2nd pass. By normal I say when I move my mouse around every once and awhile.

The problem is once I'm away from my computer (sleeping or whatever) it drops to a constant sub-1fps encoding. Once i come back it's obviously done next to nothing, and doesn't go back up to 20+. I have no idea what could possibly to causing this. I have turned off all power management options and screensaver. There's really nothing else I can think of. Here's my system configuration if that's of any help:

WinXP Pro (all relavent updates installed)
AMD Athlon XP 1600+
EPoX 8K3A+
256MB Crucial DDR2100 RAM
Radeon 8500 128MB Version
Lite-On x16 DVD-ROM Drive
2 60GB Maxtor HDDs in RAID-0
Philips 20/10/40 CD-RW Drive
That should be about all that would matter.

If anyone can help me fix this problem I'd really appreciate it. I don't pretend to have too much of a life, but I'd like not to have to sit at my computer for 4 hours moving the mouse around whenever I want to encode :P.

Thanks

[khp]

ScreenSavers are usually the cause of stuff like this, but you say, that you have already disabled this. Strange...

But since you are using WinXP, it should be pretty easy to find the problem. Start the TaskManager and select the process tab, and sort according to cpu usage. To start with virtualdub should be using near 100%, then get a cup of coffee and wait until some other process takes over the cpu.

Your other option would be to set virtualdub at a higher process priority, but unfortunatly this gets reset when virtualdub start a new pass.