encoding of xvid/avi slows down ...why? HELP!!!!

hello everyone i've tried everything and i'm completely lost in trying to figure out what causes the current issue i'm having. I am running a 3.2 ghz pentium 4 with 1gb of ram and over 300gb of space on my harddrive. Originally i didn't seem to have this problem with my computer when it comes to encoding or at least i don't think i did however right now i've noticed that when i try to encode from any file (avi mpg1 xvid whatever) into a dvd compatible format or mpg2 the conversion rate first goes up to 1.7 or 1.9 but then it starts to go down as the conversion continues. do you know of anything that could contribute to this? i initially thought something had with the installation of the converters so i uninstalled cce and tmpgenc and canopus and tried them individually but it continued...then i figured maybe it has to do with the codecs i have installed on my computer, as i still believe that may contribute but dont know for sure so, so i uninstall k-lite mega codec and installed another one a newer one which resulted in it reaching 1.9 but still slowing down significan't to like 0.9...i'm lost. any help!! please!!!

 

Sorry for the late response
Do you have any background appications that could be slowing it down?
Also try defragmenting you hard drive and see if that helps.

 

not that i know of. what kind of applications should i close that could potentially slow it down?

 

well open up your task manager and check if there is any applications that are using up alot of cpu and/or memory. You might also have some spyware so do a virus or spyware check as well.