Increase processor priority for Logic 8

Question

I saw an interesting thread on the Final Cut Pro forum - where the users were concerned that rendering did not fully use all of their cores.
This might be of use to heavy Logic users?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=819587&tstart=0
Is your Processor Performance set to "Highest" in your Energy Saver preferences?
To increase the priority of a process in Mac OS X, open the Activity Monitor in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and get the process's pid. From here, open the Terminal, which is also in the Utilities folder, and enter the following:
sudo renice -20 pid
where pid is the number you found earlier. Press Enter and type in your password; nothing will appear in the window while it is being typed. The process in question will now run as fast as the computer can make it go. The effect of this command ends when the program quits.
-20 refers to the "nice" level of the process. UNIX operating systems have what is called a scheduler, a part of the kernel that decides when tasks run and for how long before CPU time is allocated to another task.
Processes with higher "nice" levels are nicer -- meaning that they get a smaller share of the processor time. Processes with a lower nice value are less "nice". Nice values range from -20 to +19. Basically, it's a hint to the kernel's scheduler that schedules processes to run about how aggressive it should allow a process be in using up processor time. It's conceptually distinct from the concept of "priority" which enters into the process scheduling a little differently.
You can do this automatically by opening the Script Editor in the /Applications/AppleScript/ folder and pasting in the following:
tell application "Final Cut Pro"
run
end tell
set the_lines to paragraphs of (do shell script "ps -U $USER")
set the_app to "Final Cut Pro"
set the_line to ""
repeat with this_line in the_lines
if this_line contains the_app then
set the_line to this_line
end if
end repeat
if the_line is "" then return
set the_pid to word 1 of the_line
do shell script "renice -20 " & the_pid password "yourpass" with administrator privileges
Provide your administrator password in the last line, and save the script as an application in a location easy to access. Open it whenever you want to open Final Cut Pro. More information about the command, including the purpose of the -20, is available in this article.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/renice.8 .html

Answer 1

Here is an application which allows just that:
NICER
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/9473
Nicer 2.1b ©2001 Ryan Stevens
This is a beta (preview) release. Use at your own risk. If you have comments, questions or feature requests drop me a line (see the Contact section).
Know bugs:
1) Application names get clipped at 16 characters. Until I figure out a sensible way to get the full names (without mass amounts of guesswork/workaround code) this will have to do, sorry! If you have a fix you'll let me know, right!?
2) Choosing "Quit [appName]" from the context menu doesn't let you save changes (if any) in the quitting app. (This may change in next release)
3) Choosing "Kill [appName]" or "Quit [appName]" from the context menu doesn't show an alert with the option to cancel. Select one and the app will quit -- unless the process doesn't belong to you, in which case you will have a chance to cancel.
4) Although not exactly a bug, Nicer doesn't gather much meaningful info on the process. I like the simple look so if/when we gather more info it may get put into an Inspector window.
5) [insert quirk/bug/missing feature here.]
Installation:
Drag n Drop install/uninstall. I recommend putting Nicer in /Applications/Utilities/ but it's really up to you.
License:
Nicer is freeware. Bam! Simple as that.