A good primer on Windows Defender AV

Amitai:

Thanks and that's a really good tip about the real-time protection slider.

So to add some additional perspective, the reason why AV can interfere with my work would be best illustrated with the following example. I recognize my situation is certainly out of the ordinary, but again, if there is flexibility built in to the OS, I can see others benefiting too.

If I am generating an animation, that could mean anywhere between 600-1200 new files be created either via alocal network of rendering servers, or it may also be a remote rendering service. In the case of local that would also mean my own PC would be helping to generate the frames (files) and in those cases it's using 100% of the CPU (Xeon 12-core) and probably 10-16GB of RAM. So if during this process the system is at all pushing for it's own CPU interupts in order to scan incoming files (from other servers on the network), you can see how that'd be a problem. Each frame generally takes 10 minutes or more to generate (sometimes 20-30 mins.) so it can start to add up over time. 

In the case of an outside service it's more a matter of having many files coming in all at the same time, which again I'd rather not have the OS pause and scan each and every one, at least not while I'm working.
Thanks again!
Doug