Optimize OS X for performance of single app?

Question

I'm going to be using my computer to run an real-time video display application at an event. This application is processor intensive, and runs well, except for occasional stutters. I'm thinking the stutters might be from other applications/processes using computer resources (proc/drive/etc.) For this event, this application deserves priority and everything else can wait. Does anyone have some general tips for giving a single application priority and keeping the computer from doing any other housekeeping (such as spotlight indexing)?

Answer 1

If it's CPU intensive, use renice to assign a higher scheduling priority.

You can use top -o cpu to observe other processes' CPU usage and kill them if necessary, but Spotlight indexing is more I/O bound anyway.