Allocate More Memory To Specific Application?

So I use Miro to convert a lot of stuff, mostly .mov videos into .mp4, But without fail, Miro seems to be one of the few applications that will solely and almost instantly send my fan whiiirrriiing and the temperature of my macbook skyrockets

When I check it out on Activity Monitor, even if I have everything else closed it seems to be using a measly amount of my RAM and CPU. I've got 2.2GHz i7 and 8GB of RAM, so my question is, is there any way to allocate more of this to a specific application at one time to cool things down and maybe even speed things up?

My understanding of video conversion isn't huge, but again from looking at Activity Monitor, it seems to be using the ffmpeg codec to do most of the work. Maybe I can allocate some more there?

Meh, I think I answered my own question. Its tipping around 700% CPU usage. I guess if I wan't the fan to stay down I'd actually have to find a way to limit that. Would more RAM be helpful though?

Do you get the same behavior our of other converters such as Handbrake or MPEG Streamclip?

Also, can you tell us a bit more about the video clips such as file size and whether they are HD? I've done a number of conversions recently with both programs and neither one causes that behavior. It is a bit slow on my Mac Pro with 4 GB but it works.

Thanks Slydude, I tried out a few things with Handbrake. a 200mb .flv and a 734mb .avi

Both showed improved results, the fan kicked in eventually, but not as much or as fast as Miro made it ramp up. Handbrake was jumping around the 500% CPU mark on Activity Monitor.

I did like the simplicity of Miro so thats a shame, I guess i'll just use it for smaller .mov clips from my phone in the future, Handbrake can deal with the bigger stuff

There may be better suggestions out there. I personally have not found a program I like as much as VisualHub though sadly it is no longer under active development.