Reduce the CPU load from iTunes song encoding
Nov 24, '04 08:24:00AM • Contributed by: smithkennedy
When I use iTunes to rip a CD or otherwise change a song's encoding (say from Apple Lossless to AAC), my old Rev. A TiBook's CPU load will be so high that it starts to make it less responsive and somewhat unusable. It even affects the network card, which will periodically drop the network connection. Playing with the UNIX renice command never had any noticeable effect on this issue (in fact, it usually caused some problems).
A trick I stumbled across the other day is to start the rip or conversion operation, and then open up the Preferences dialog. This will reduce the CPU load by a third on my laptop, and will allow everything else to function normally.
I assume the scheduling of the run loop for handling the dialog forces the better behavior.) It will extend the time it takes to perform the task, but at least I can still use my laptop while it is doing it in the background.