Tovid GUI used to perform well before a recent upgrade. Querying ffmpeg version produced this output: john@john-kubuntu-desktop:~$ ffmpeg -version FFmpeg version r11872+debian_3:0.svn20080206-12ubuntu3.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-swscaler --enable-x11grab --prefix=/usr --enable-libgsm --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --disable-strip --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaadbin --enable-liba52 --enable-liba52bin --enable-libdc1394 --disable-armv5te --disable-armv6 --disable-altivec --disable-vis --enable-shared --disable-static libavutil version: 49.6.0 libavcodec version: 51.50.0 libavformat version: 52.7.0 libavdevice version: 52.0.0 built on Mar 13 2009 17:48:10, gcc: 4.3.2
FFmpeg r11872+debian_3:0.svn20080206-12ubuntu3.1 libavutil 3212800 libavcodec 3355136 libavformat 3409664 libavdevice 3407872
I hope this is helpful, can provide log files.