Logic Pro X - System Overload; Processing Threads; Freeze Mode Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to this Logic Pro 10 video
tutorial on working with system overload
messages as well as working with CPU
processing threads as well as the freeze
mode the reason why I put all three of
these topics in this video is because
they all sort of relate to the system
overload error message that I'm sure
everyone has seen by now and what this
really has to do with is it has to do
with logic sort of overloading the
processor the CPU load is too much for
your computer's processor to handle this
is a topic that has come up a lot and a
lot of people have asked me about you
know I keep getting this system overload
message how do I deal with this how do I
work around this a lot of people have
gotten really frustrated with logic but
really when it comes down to it you
should you should blame your computer's
peripherals you know logic after all is
a pro app and if you don't have a
computer with pro specs you're really
not going to get everything out of logic
that you could get out of it getting
this message is also only exacerbated by
having a session with a large track
count having on-screen plug-ins like my
kramer tape here where there's sort of a
visual element as well as an audio
element having a lot of plugins in your
mixer and also just having a lot of a
lot of stuff going on had a lot of
automation having a lot of virtual
instruments so all of these things sort
of come into play when it comes to
whether or not your system can handle
the session you're trying to run the
first way to work around the system
overload message is to optimize the
number of cores or processing threads
that logic can tap into one way to start
is to double click on your CPU meter and
you can double check the number of cores
and how much of each core is being used
as well as the disk i/o which is
basically a
much of the disk read and write is being
used so obviously a solid-state drive is
going to perform better than magnetic
mechanical media so if you have a 7200
rpm or 5400 rpm hard drive you may be
taxing that hard drive more than say a
solid-state drive if you don't initially
see this meter one thing you can do is
make sure that the custom view is shown
in the LCD and if if it's still not
shown you can right-click and choose
customize control bar and display and
then make sure to show the load meters
under the LCD column here and that'll
show the CPU HD meter and again you can
double click on it to show it so the
meters are low because we're not really
using either of our two cores because
the session isn't playing but when the
session is playing we might be eating up
a lot of CPU power so to optimize that
you go to preferences audio and then
from here we're going to go down and
look at our processing threads menu
right now the number of threads is 2 so
what I'm going to do is I'm going to
change this to automatic and what this
is gonna do is it's going to sort of
optimize it's sort of going to give
logic the decision to decide you know
what it thinks the best number of cores
to use for it is and sometimes it's not
always the best decision in my case this
computer has a this particular computer
has a dual-core processor but it's hyper
threaded so that means that it basically
has two cores but then two virtual cores
but when I choose automatic it still
only gives me two cores so if I choose
four and hit apply changes it's going to
allow me to use the two regular course
plus the two virtual cores for a total
of four processing cores or for
processing threads so the workload is
going to be a bit more equally
distributed across four cores now rather
than just two cores the only downside to
this is now logic is utilizing all four
cores and if we have Safari open maybe
we're checking the internet or we have
other apps open those extra apps are not
going to be able to tap into the extra
available cores like we did before
when logic was only using two cores
rather than four so it's sort of a
trade-off you know logic is going to run
better on four cores but it means that
you're going to have to sort of avoid
opening other apps simultaneously
because those apps are not going to be
able to run as well with logic
simultaneously eating up all four cores
also keep in mind that all of these
settings are going to be contingent upon
your computer peripherals the computer I
normally use to do screen captures and
to run my sessions on actually is a four
core quad core processor and is hyper
threaded and actually is hyper thread
for up to eight total core so basically
for actual cores and for virtual cores
so it's one of the reasons why I don't
have a lot of the the processing issues
that a lot of people asking about is
because I what I'll normally do is I'll
set logic to be able to run six cores
and then have two extra cores available
for other apps to run off of so you know
logic will be utilizing six cores
basically for the main cores and two of
the virtual cores and then you know if I
decide to open up Safari and check my
email or whatever then those extra two
cores are sort of used to run Safari or
whatever other app I want to run so
again keep in mind that all this is
contingent upon your computer's specs so
let's say that you need another
workaround for that system overload
message maybe your dual core maybe even
your quad core processor just isn't
cutting it for logic one thing you can
do is you can freeze your tracks so you
can right click on the track header go
down to track header components and from
there go to show freeze
so to freeze your tracks you click on
the little snowflake icon that shows up
on all the tracks you can actually click
and swipe down to select multiple tracks
you can also click and swipe down to
select or deselect a bunch of tracks
just for this example I'm just going to
freeze the top two tracks so you just
click on those two icons and you hit
spacebar to start the playback of your
session now what freeze does is actually
pre renders the tracks that you've
chosen the freeze option on and so it
basically converts those track
two audio files so it's sort of pre
renders the instrument and any effects
that are on that track into an audio
file and the reason why it does that and
the reason why this is useful is that
it's it takes a lot less CPU power to
just play an audio file than it does to
play a software instrument with a bunch
of signal processing on it with a bunch
of plugins on it so you could if you
wanted to you could do this with your
entire session or all the tracks in your
project rather than just two and if you
do that you should be able to play the
whole session regardless of how many
tracks are in it even let's say a
dual-core processor one limitation is
that you're not able to change the
inserts or the instrument on the chance
trip however you can still change the
bus amount or the send amounts and you
can also change the pan as well as the
volume control all of the effects in the
instrument are actually rendered into
the audio file so those things are
frozen the other thing you can't do is
if you double-click on a MIDI clip and
try to change some of the MIDI data
it'll just prompt you to say hey the
current track is frozen so you're not
going to be able to alter that track
what you'd have to do is actually
unfreeze that track and then go and try
to change the MIDI data on the track and
then refreeze that track so I hope this
video has helped you out with the system
overload message and if you liked the
video please give me a like below and
maybe subscribe to the channel as well
and I hope you enjoyed the video and
thanks for watching