A few things I learned using this program in the last few days some people might find useful, especially if you are running an Intel 12th or 13th-gen CPU and are using FileFlows to compress using software x.265 encoding. I prefer that over QSV, NVENC, VCE, VideoToolbox hardware encoding. For reference I'm using an Intel i9-13900K at stock non-overclocked speeds (P-cores at 5.5Ghz, E-cores at 4.3Ghz) on a Win11 box setup as a dedicated FileFlows node.
Without manually setting powerthrottling to disabled on ffmpeg, no matter how many instances (runners in FileFlows) you have running, your system will only use the E-Cores on the CPU, drastically reducing compression speed. You can test this by running HWInfo and looking at your P-core temps and "Total CPU Utility" speeds while FileFlows is running. With 1 runner I was getting around 63% Total CPU Utility, but with powerthrottling disabled I was getting around 90% Total CPU Utility.
I ran multiple tests with various numbers of runners, and found the sweet spot to be three on the 13900K. With default Windows powerthrottling enabled and three runners, I was still only getting around 75% Total CPU Utility, and it took around 85 minutes to compress three 1080p h.264 movies to HEVC, with an average (combined) encoding speed of 77 fps. With powerthrottling disabled, the Total CPU Utility went to around 161%, and the same three movies converted in 47 minutes, with an average (combined) encoding speed of 140 fps.
To disable powerthrottling you need to open an elevated command prompt window and type in:
POWERCFG /POWERTHROTTLING DISABLE /PATH "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\FileFlows\Tools\ffmpeg.exe"
Replace "username" in that command line with whatever your username is. Upon testing, this seems to survive Windows reboots. This will obviously cause your CPU to draw more power and run hotter as it will be using all the cores, not just the E-cores, so keep an eye on HWInfo core temps and make sure your cooler can keep up and not hit Tjmax and throttle it down.
At that point, if you aren't thermally throttling, you may be able to squeeze a little more performance out by overclocking/undervolting, but that is largely dependent on the CPU lottery, your cooler, overclocking skills, etc. I haven't yet messed with any of that as I've only had this CPU about a week, but compared to my prior CPU I was using, an Intel i9-9900K overclocked to all-core 5Ghz, the 13900K is running considerably faster even at stock (3 simultaneous runners movie test: 13900K 140 fps vs 67 fps on 9900K), with not much more total power draw.
