Closing the lid puts it in sleep. I think there's a way to change what closing the lid does, I just don't know how.
if its an intel laptop, close the lid then wake it up with a keyboard. this is assuming you have a external kb and monitor
I would just leave the lid open. The computer can get very hot, especially while encoding... and you don't want heat trapped between the keyboard and LCD.
except that the intel laptops were designed to run open or closed (aka clamshell) so i wouldnt worry about it
Sure, but you can't possibly think they were designed to run closed while encoding video 24/7. That's a helluva task to ask a laptop to consistently do.
For the sake of longevity, just leave it open for maximum possible airflow.
i honeslty think it would be fine if they designed it to run that way. they probably have failure indexes of less than .75 for all components in that situation i would imagine
however leaving it open will keep your laptop cooler (esp screen) for sure, but i think it would be perfectly fine if it was closed as well
Really? Encoding video would seem to be very processor intensive.
There isn't a way to change it, without using a third-party program like insomniax.
Why do Macs need a third party program? With a Windows laptop, you can tell it what to do whether you close the lid, hit the power button, and in Vista, hit the power button from the Start menu. Also, there can be different settings for whether the laptop is plugged in or on battery power. To me, this just seems so basic to have in the OS, I'm really surprised to find that it's not in OS X.
I'm not really sure, but I was confused by it too. But with the speed at which OS X sleeps and wakes from sleep, the only time it matters is when you are trying to do something while the lid is closed. I guess Apple just didn't expect people to want to close the lid while the computer worked.