1. A method of managing utilization of an integrated circuit (IC) processor, comprising: monitoring processor utilization by an adjustable software video encoder program running on a first thread, the adjustable video software encoder program having at least two different performance levels associated with a video quality of individual frames, wherein each performance level has a different associated IC processor utilization and said performance levels comprise video encoding levels corresponding to an encoder configuration; selecting a performance level corresponding to a video encoding level to achieve a highest possible video quality while maintaining an idle thread utilization above a minimum threshold selected to permit another software program to load and execute; and generating running estimates of processor utilization for previous instantiations of the adjustable software video encoder program to determine how much to adjust said performance levels.