i will look now and then edit my comment to reflect.  thank you Baloo  :)

ok!  after changing max_execution_time from 30 to 480, now i have this happen.

video transcodes, (i watched the sql database move through the 4 entries in real time..)

30seconds was set previous, which prevented the que from even showing up when cron was run..   

okay so now that cron hooks the transcoder correctly, this is next problem:

video shows as attachment, but will not insert into post..

will try to change default quality to hd in dev module, from sd

update 10 minutes or so later:  video quality changed to hd from sd...

watching transcoder que.... it's now running through videos from bx_messenger...

I assume there have been a whole backlog of videos that have been back-logged and trying to run every time the site is used or webserver is rebooted, and this has been causing the long page opens as well...

perhaps in about an hour or three all old videos will be processed and i will find a transcoder que blank :)

tried to upload 148meg test video just now that anton had requested, and also i will note that i changed my ffmpeg to the latest x64 nightly...

ONE WEIRD THING... I had to take the linux binary and add .exe onto the end ....  for una's script to detect it as executable.. consider changing this, it's confusing and non standard unix/ gnu/linux behavior... not a standard convention whatsoever.

hmm.  yup, any video over a certain size is killing php and php has been allocated plenty of memory. and by plenty i mean it can spawn into 3 gb if it feels a need to...

pattern is this: it launches 4 workers, 41m physical, 450m virtual, and a few minutes later it dies.  and then cron emails me about it.  however, it's really strange - it's emailing me the flags for 94 megs and 64 megs, even though

/etc/php.ini has been adjusted

/home/siteuserForUna/.php/phprc has been adjusted.....

this is very peculiar.....