Make Movie Maker Run In Background?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stewart Berman
  • Start date Start date
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Stewart Berman

Is there anyway to make Windows Movie Maker run as a background task while it's saving a movie?

I tried using Task Manager to set its priority to low but it still hogs the machine. and stops
anything else from performing reasonably.
 
If it was just CPU heavy it won't be bad -- lower the priority and other things would run. But it
does worse than that -- it doesn't let go so nothing else gets dispatched. (I run Nero on the same
machine and it allows other tasks to get dispatched. You don't even notice it is running.)

I am running Windows XP Pro SP2. Isn't there someway to set the cpu slices so one poorly written
task can't take over the machine?
 
If you could do this it would significantly add to the rendering time plus
potentially cause rendering glitches (especially with the audio portion)
-Wojo
 
I expect it would take longer but if it was really running as a background task who cares how long
it takes?

If the input and the output are on a hard drive why would smaller time slices affect the quality?
Does the rendering process have race conditions that give different results depending on the loading
of the machine?
 
Rendering isn't a real time process... it'll take whatever time it needs to
get it right.

One way to slow down the CPU usage is to render it using source files on one
computer, Movie Maker on a different one, and the saved movie on a third
one, using a slower network connection. By having the weakest link the
network speed, the CPU doesn't run at full 100%, you can continue to use the
computer for other stuff, and you still get your movie at the quality you
want... just takes a bit more time.

It also keeps the computer running cooler.
--
PapaJohn

Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 3 website - http://www.papajohn.org
MM2 Tips and Tricks: http://www.simplydv.co.uk/simplyBB/viewtopic.php?t=4693
Online Newsletters: http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn/Index.aspx
 
Papajohn is correct and we've been through this discussion before.
I've run different tests running other processes that slow down the
rendering etc... and they didn't effect the final video but I have also run
the same tests using MP3 audio and saving to DV-AVI and that is when I
experience audio "glitches" others complain about these audio problems all
the time when using DV-AVI but if I limit all other background processes and
simply leave my computer alone I never have this problem.
-Wojo
 
Unless you are using a real-time analog feed it should not matter how fast or slow it runs.
Converting one digital format to another is a deterministic process unless there are bugs in the
software (like uninitialized variables, race conditions, etc.). It sounds like Windows Movie Maker
hogs the CPU because it has problems if it is interrupted. Sounds like either the converters or WMM
or both have a few bugs.
 
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