I was wondering -- if I'm ripping a DVD, and I do it while my computer is doing a lot of other stuff, can this reduce the quality, or cause errors in, the resulting rip?

I have heard both yes and no as an answer to this, but wonder if there is any REAL answer, assuming a clean system and well-working hardware.

It really should not. The bits are sent back and forth and checked along the way but I guess if the system gets so busy it may starting missings things. Years ago it was slow systems, today we can very easy max out a system with all the tasks we throw at it. I know I can send an AMD 3200 right to the brink sometimes, actually more often then I like to see.

And given that a rip you are using a reader / burner to get the data and they like a fast steady stream of data so my vote is Yes

I multitask all the time and have no problems on my AMD 3200 Athlon64 with 1.5GB memory. I'll rip while I surf, use winamp, scan, print or do photo work with Paintshop Pro (or combos of the above). I recode and burn while doing the same type of things.

The only thing I don't do at the same time is burn and scan at the same time, just in case. But, YMMV. If you have a system tray full of auto-start programs eating up memory, causing the swapfile to work overtime, a slow system, etc, it may hamper your work. I still don't think you would increase the likelyhood of errors but just slow your system down to a crawl.

i don't have overly abundant resources on my computer (p4 2ghz, 512mb ram) but I multitask while ripping. On a computer like mine it will cause a noticeable slowdown in comparison to just walking away from the computer and letting it run, but I've never encountered errors.

i do, however, try not to do much during the actual write process. maybe some light web-browsing.

based on other threads I've read it seems as though the consensus on the issue is that it might be possible, but it's more likely to slow you down than cause major errors.

if you want to be on the safe side then i'd just recommend not touching anything when processing dvds

The ideal solution is avoiding multitasking while ripping. Well... I don't want to elaborate on the reasons, but in some cases it may cause problems.

Hey Alex...

Could you elaborate a tiny bit? I'm a software engineer, pretty familiar with what goes on in machines, so I'd be curious, if you have a moment. :-)

- tim

I could only imagine a non functioning hardware to cause problems. I heard stories about some VIA chipsets having problems with heavy traffic on the PCI bus, but this has been a while ago...

As you are a professional, it goes without saying that multitasking requires much more resources, and using different software while ripping may cause a "program not responding" message or a "simple" system freeze in some cases.
(Depends on the software used at the same time, of course).

A semi-professional user.

Hi Alex...

Of course. I'm not intimately familiar with the internals of Windows, however (most of my work is in Java, or C on Unix-like systems), and that world can be nightmarish in the interactions of libraries, apps and system code... thought you might know specific things that have gone wrong (or theoretically could) in a Windows environment, as long as all DLLs, apps and hardware were "well-behaved" (i.e. didn't hang or completely peg the processor, for example).

- Tim

assuming everything is "well-behaved," there's nothing wrong with multitasking while ripping a dvd. it might take longer, but the results should be fine.