You can not easily (if at all) change an executables thread level priority.
Sure I can... even on running tasks. I just hit control-alt-delete to bring up the Windows Task Manager of Windows XP, find oggenc.exe, right-click on it, and change its priority. The problem with that technique is that Media Jukebox starts a new oggenc.exe for every track.
That oggenc.exe has a high thread level priority is a good thing, for it prevents errors in the encoded files.
Um, what? We're not talking about burning a CD, where you have a spinning object that needs data written to it
right now or there will be a gap in the information. We're talking about reading data that's on the hard-drive in the form of a .wav file, number-crunching it, and writing it to the hard-drive in the form of a .ogg file. That's fundamentally no different than doing raytracing or any other kind of non-time-critical number-crunching.
Even pulling the .wav file off the CD isn't vulnerable to skips, as the CD isn't being read in real-time (in fact, is almost always being read faster than real-time), and the process will just go back and try again if it missed some data due to a hiccup. Or am I missing something?
I haven't seen any drastic slowdown while oggenc is encoding. What's your OS and how much RAM?
I'm running Windows XP, and I have 256 megs of PC100 RAM on a 650 MHz Athlon. So I am more sensitive to slowdowns than the average user, 'cause my computer isn't exactly speedy by today's standards. (Hopefully the Barton flavor of Athlon CPU will actually come out soon, so I can upgrade without feeling silly....)
At the moment, I'm getting around the problem by using the Windows Task Manager to find the app I'm running in the foreground, and then increasing its priority slightly. That helps a lot. But then every time I change my foreground app, I need to do that again. I'd rather lower the priority of oggenc.exe, but I need Media Jukebox's help to do that in a way that lasts more than a minute or three.