The only reason (besides a rousing round of CnC3) for me to boot into my Windows partition is that I can't find a good encoder for my Zen Vision. I can encode just fine with mencoder, but it prevents me from using both cores. I do a lot of encoding work for my player daily and it would be much more efficient if I could use both cores and cut down on the times especially with bigger files. Is there a program (preferably with a front-end, if not, that is OK too) that will let me encode MPEG-2 or Xvid/AVIs using both cores of my Pentium D or is that a lost cause?

TIA, all!

If you like using mencoder you should read the man page. Search for 'threads'.

Avidemux2 allows you to choose the number of threads (cores) used. It is pretty handy at most video conversions and some (limited) editing.