The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Video Encoding max. 50% CPU usage

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Maurik, Jul 7, 2008.

  1. Maurik

    Maurik Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    32
    Messages:
    128
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Hi,

    I'm going on holiday on wednesday and it will be a long journey of 9 hours. So I wanted to get some movies and tv shows onto my PMP.

    I have a Core Duo platform (see my sig). Windows XP Hotfix Patch: KB896256 installed.

    Right now when I am encoding, FFMpeg only uses 50% of the CPU (presumably 1 core). It is taking about 15 minutes to encode a TV show (700kbps Xvid, 128kbps mp3).

    I'd like to use both the cores to speed up the program so that encoding takes shorter.

    Hope you can help, Thanks!!

    Maurik
     
  2. Maurik

    Maurik Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    32
    Messages:
    128
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I tried using the -threads 2 command in FFMpeg... didn't work.

    So I don't understand why it still uses only 50% CPU
     
  3. xvvvz

    xvvvz Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    22
    Messages:
    305
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    What power profile are you using? If it is Power Saver or anything less than Performance, it may be limiting your processor as part of the profile.
     
  4. Andy

    Andy Notebook Prophet

    Reputations:
    2,133
    Messages:
    6,399
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    206
    I am not very sure, but just like games....most software may not be configured to utilize two cores at a time.. (just a guess..!!).. :D
     
  5. olyteddy

    olyteddy Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    468
    Messages:
    1,369
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Can you run two seperate instances and do two different vids at once?
     
  6. Maurik

    Maurik Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    32
    Messages:
    128
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    @xvvvz : full "desktop" power setting, same I use to play COD4.

    @angad1608 : "-threads 2" is meant to allow me to use both the cores.

    @olyteddy : I am using 3GP converter as a GUI for FFMpeg. I think this is where the problem lies, I cannot open 2 instances at once, but FFMpeg is able to run at 100% using a different program (but a completely different encode)
     
  7. flipfire

    flipfire Moderately Boss

    Reputations:
    6,156
    Messages:
    11,214
    Likes Received:
    68
    Trophy Points:
    466
    Go to your Task manager, look for the programs process. Right click and see if you can set the programs priority or affinity.

    In vista you can change the affinity to both cores, im not sure about XP
     
  8. Maurik

    Maurik Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    32
    Messages:
    128
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Priority makes no difference, affinity is already set to CPU 0 and CPU 1.
     
  9. FusiveResonance

    FusiveResonance Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    143
    Messages:
    421
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Following up on olyteddy's suggestion:

    start two instances and set each instance's affinity to a unique core.