Why are processes started with low priority?

[jim_kanepele]

Hi all,

I've been encoding my movies to Divx with
Gordian Knot for quite a while now, with
very few problems I must say.

One thing I do find odd, is on my XP system
Gordian Knot seems to start all processes
with low-priority. I haven't found anything
on this board regarding to this subject.

My questions:
- Why start them with low priority?
- Shouldn't this be a setting?
- Should I change this processes manually to
a higher priority when I don't need my machine?

Thanks for the info

[khp]

Originally posted by jim_kanepele
- Why start them with low priority?


Because it makes the PC more useable while encoding.

Originally posted by jim_kanepele

- Shouldn't this be a setting?


Maybe, but than there would be a million other things that would also be nice to have as settings in GKnot, which would make GK more complicated to use.

Originally posted by jim_kanepele

- Should I change this processes manually to
a higher priority when I don't need my machine?


You might, but why bother, typically encoding would only become a few minutes faster. Unless you are using a cpu intensive screensaver, which will of course slow down the encoding by alot.

[hakko504]

Originally posted by jim_kanepele
Why start them with low priority?
Shouldn't this be a setting?
Should I change this processes manually to a higher priority when I don't need my machine?

[list=1]
Like khp said, to make the machine more useful when encoding: On the other I personally prefer to only encode as my machine seems slightly more unstable when I'm doing encodes.
You can change the priority settings by starting VirtualDub and choose Options->Preferences from the menu and then change Dub Defaults to whatever you like it to use. Hint: Highest will make it almost impossible to control mouse. Higher or Even Higher is recommended.
I prefer to do it the other way, lower the process priority when I need the machine for something. (When VD/ND is running click on Dub in progress->Show Status window and then set priority.)
[/list=1]

[Zalbar]

I second that - a while ago I started defaulting my encodes to idle time only, and have been very happy as a result. When you're doing nothing, the encode is as fast as possible, and when you really need to grab the mouse and look something up on the internet the encode won't lag me down. I don't use a screen saver, only a screenblank. I've never noticed more than a few minutes difference in total encode time even under heavy web browsing and such - unless of course I played a game of operation flashpoint in the middle somewhere. And there's no point in letting the CPU allocate time away from the game, or it would be chunky playing and there would be no point. ;)

Also I typically rip DVD's or set up future encodes under gknot or do, i.e. manual IVTCing under TMPGEnc while the current encode is processing - thereby using up the otherwise wasted CPU cycles due to my slow human reflexes, without slowing up the GUI.

Hit ctrl-alt-del under 2K or XP and look at the taskmanager under processes - you see how the system idle process gets ~98% of the CPU time? That's how much your encode would get even if you set it for idle time only and ran it all by itself. It would not increase significantly under higher priorities because even then, it would not preempt most of the OS overhead/upkeep activities. You would only need to increase the priority if you had other, long-running CPU-hungry tasks which you wanted to preempt with your encode - but usually, you would always want short tasks/occasional use things to pre-empt the long-running encode because the overall time to completion would end up being the same whether the OS gets the small shit out of the way quickly, or does it slowly over time, and the responsiveness and usefulness of the machine is better this way.

Under Win98 I would set my machine to encode and then not touch it until it was finished due to instability issues - but since I've gone to WinXP those issues have evaporated and my machine seems quite solid and useful while encoding. With Vdub priority on idle, you would never notice the background encode.