'Renicing' Pro Tools [solved]

[TrentWilliams]

Is there anyone out there who has experience with 'renicing' Pro Tools? I've changed the value to -20 with an AppleScript but it's resetting itself back to 0 after every process.

For example - I renice Pro Tools to -20; confirm it is indeed -20; open a plugin window; recheck the nice value; it's reset back to 0.

Looking for advice, if any.

[Darryl Ramm]

Opening a plugin does not renice Pro Tools for me.

$ ps -evlc | head -1
  PID STAT      TIME  SL  RE PAGEIN      VSZ    RSS   LIM     TSIZ  %CPU %MEM COMMAND            UID  PPID        F CPU PRI NI WCHAN              ADDR TTY
$ ps -evlc | grep 'Pro Tools\s*\d'
16702 S      2:20.43   0   0      0 10292984 752176     -        0  14.0  2.2 Pro Tools          501     1     4084   0  97  0 -                     0 ??
$ sudo renice -20 16702
$ ps -evlc | head -1
  PID STAT      TIME  SL  RE PAGEIN      VSZ    RSS   LIM     TSIZ  %CPU %MEM COMMAND            UID  PPID        F CPU PRI NI WCHAN              ADDR TTY
$ sudo renice -20 16702
$ ps -evlc | grep 'Pro Tools\s*\d'
16702 S<     2:24.21   0   0      0 10292984 752176     -        0  14.2  2.2 Pro Tools          501     1     4084   0  97 -20 -                     0 ??
$ ### Opened plugins and inserted more plugins...
$ ps -evlc | head -1
  PID STAT      TIME  SL  RE PAGEIN      VSZ    RSS   LIM     TSIZ  %CPU %MEM COMMAND            UID  PPID        F CPU PRI NI WCHAN              ADDR TTY
$ ps -evlc | grep 'Pro Tools\s*\d'
16702 S<     2:33.31   0   0      0 10296448 759680     -        0  16.6  2.3 Pro Tools          501     1     4084   0  97 -20 -                     0 ??

Show us what exactly you are doing and looking at.

[JFreak]

It would actually be impossible for PT to renice itself along the way as the process is not ran with root privilege. Admin user is not enough for renice


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[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by JFreak

It would actually be impossible for PT to renice itself along the way as the process is not ran with root privilege. Admin user is not enough for renice

Actually that only goes one way. You only need root privilege to decrease priority below 0. Going the other way is easy, any process can do that it to itself.

Still this seems strange behavior and I would want to see what exactly is being looked at here.

[TrentWilliams]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Actually that only goes one way. You only need root privilege to decrease priority below 0. Going the other way is easy, any process can do that it to itself.

Still this seems strange behavior and I would want to see what exactly is being looked at here.

Thanks for the reply Darryl,

Here's a screen capture : https://streamable.com/3ux0og

[Darryl Ramm]

OK Trent, well it's not doing that for me. I tried multiple sessions and made sure I put the transport in play after opening the plugins etc. the same as you did.

I have a pretty clean install of 2020.5 on Mojave 10.14.6. (so close to yours).

So one wild ass guess here is a plugin might be doing something silly, and maybe not even the one you are opening.

If you want to get carried away we could scan all the plugin binaries for the setpriority() system call, but it's just easier for you do do a quick test there of moving all plugins out of the Pro Tools folder, trashing prefs, and testing with the session with just the default plugins that Pro Tools puts back.

[Darryl Ramm]

Make sure you have not left applescript to do stuff, have it invoking a mangled renice command etc. I would get rid of all that/that might be left running. And test without it.

[TrentWilliams]

Hey Darryl! Thanks for your hard work in helping me figure this one out. It turns out there was another application open (App Tamer) which was prioritising nice values and interfering. Once I closed that app I was then able to set PT to -20 and have it stay there. I wrote an AppleScript which auto sets PT to -20 on launch so I don’t have to go through terminal every time 🍻

[JFreak]

Good to hear. But I doubt making PT not nice will make a difference. Would be happy to be proven wrong though


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[TrentWilliams]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Good to hear. But I doubt making PT not nice will make a difference. Would be happy to be proven wrong though


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks J,

Take it for a spin and report back? I ‘feel’ like it’s snappier and slightly more responsive but that could be placebo talking. *Plugins do seem a little faster to open?

The biggest performance increase I’ve seen in recent days is utilising a TimeMachine scheduler to automate backups outside of work hours. TM really hogs system resources, can not recommend enough.