[murthys]

I have a new iMac 800/Superdrive with 512 MB RAM. Why does energy saver kick in when I'm rendering a 60 min imovie file into Quicktime? I started the conversion before going to bed and when I woke up it had barely finished 20%! Then I restarted with energy saver off but screen saver on, it was still very slow. Only when I turned off even the screen saver, it proceeded at a reasonable rate of 1 min of conversion in 2 min or real time. Is this normal?

[lavar78]

That's what I had to do, too.

[Matt K]

I had a similar problem where an import from my DV camera stopped when energy saver kicked in. Seems like Apple screwed that one up. It shouldn't do that.

[Dan Szwarc]

Ironically, the engery saver does not seem to know what "activity" really is. Hard disk, USB, and FW data transferring don't count. It has to be keyboard or mouse activity to keep it from kicking in.

I recommend diabling it altogether while rending, importing, or processing DV or setting it to only turn off the monitor (never sleep HD) and NO SCREENSAVERS!

This crazy rule seems to apply to all PCs or Macs. I have yet to meet a machine that doesn't sleep.