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I'm running Windows 7 Quad Core 4100. When rendering a DVD movie in Pinnacle 16 I get a pop up message of High CPU usage. According to Task Manager it's running in the high 90 percent and has stopped working at times.

How can I slow the CPU usage down?

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    When you say it stops working at times, do you mean the computer slows down, or crashes? Having high CPU usage while running video editing software is normal. Jan 28, 2013 at 7:12
  • Why would you want rendering to take longer?! Jan 28, 2013 at 7:54

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This behaviour is expected and perfectly good for video rendering. If you have a multi core machine (and if Pinnacle is multi core aware), you can go to task manager, right click the process and set the affinity to only a few cores.

However, I would leave it at 100% if I was you - would you rather run the CPU at 50% and it take twice as long?

Personally, I would also check for antivirus and see if you can exclude Pinnacle's temporary folder and whatever folder it is saving the file to as that may make a big difference (and if it doesn't lower CPU, it could increase speed heavily).

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Check for other running programs and kill them. Make sure your computer has plenty of airflow, laptop assuming, and that the temperatures of your CPU cores aren't terribly high. CoreTemp is a good means of doing that.

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  • I have disabled all servises so nothing else is running and still the CPU runs in the high 90's percent
    – user193338
    Jan 28, 2013 at 6:57
  • I see you're running desktop also. Is your computer well ventilated? Cleaned the fans and the heatsink recently?
    – Cora
    Jan 28, 2013 at 6:58
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    @user193338: That's good. It means your software is taking full advantage of your CPU. Jan 28, 2013 at 7:55
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I did your suggestion - cleaned the CPU. The CPU was factory installed on the mother board but when I took it apart it was obvious to me that the Heat Paste was not adaquat or aplied very well. It now still runs in the mid to high 90% range and hits 100 quite a lot now that it didn't do before but it hasn't crashed my program since. I suspect that if that paste was not adaquat the CPU could have developed enough temp to shut down; just guessing. Thank you. Jay

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    Ohhhh, did you meen 90 degrees? Or processor utilization? Feb 1, 2013 at 2:13

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