Strange iTunes problem (can't find answer anywhere)

Question

Basically I run iTunes and, with or without the iPod connected, with or without music playing, my mouse and keyboard begin to intermittently freeze.
i.e. here's how it might go:
-Run iTunes
-For 10-30 seconds it runs fine
-Suddenly my mouse and keyboard will freeze for ~10 seconds
-For about 10-30 more seconds I can move again
-Again, my mouse and keyboard freeze for ~10 seconds
-Repeat every 10-30 seconds.
If I have music or a game playing, everything else continues normally, i.e. music playing will never stop, just my mouse and keyboard stop responding.
If I close iTunes, the problem remains until I restart the computer. If I ctrlaltdel to see what's going on, iTunes is always running after I open it once, even if I close it, iTunes remains on the task list, no matter how many times I close it. And not only that, it remains at 50+mb of memory usage, higher than anything else running on my system.
On top of this, I can't restart properly either once this iTunes-induced intermittent freezing occurs. If I Start --> Restart, the farthest it might get is "Windows is shutting down," but it will freeze there for good until I just hit the physical reset button. *This only happens if I run iTunes once during a session*
Please help! Please go ahead and ask me questions so I can clarify the problem more.

Answer 1

I believe you have the fundamental misunderstanding of what is happening in this process.
When you create a DVD, all video material - without regard to original format - is converted to a highly compressed MPEG2 format and the audio to either an aiff or ac3 format. The video and audio files are then mixed (muxed) together into a series of VOB files. The major controllers of final quality are: original footage quality, compression bitrate and the amount of motion within frames. The overall length has an impact on bitrate as the DVD spec was designed for a 2 hr limit. HDV presents it's own problems as the 15 frame GOP format is not simply converted to the SD NTSC format.
You may want to spend time to understand how the mpeg2 compression works so you can make suitable adjustments if the result is unacceptable. It is a bit of a dark art but controllable to some extent.
The easy setups available in DVDSP are a good place to start and each parameter within the compression process is adjustable.
good luck.
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