Computer crash when using video looper - prevention?

Hey all,

I've been building a video looper lately. Suddenly my computer crashed while having my document open, and I think it might have to do with me completely filling up the RAM with video, causing the computer to work too hard, heating up and crashing. It went completely black and wouldn't start for a couple of hours (when trying to start it (a macbook pro), the white lamp that indicates if the mac is sleeping shone statically, and the computer made some scary beeping noice). Then suddenly it would start and everything's been normal since then.

Now over to my main question - can you recommend any preventions against overloading the processor / the RAM memory? I'm thinking there might be some good ways to monitor the machine, and how hard it's working. And that I could build in a functionality in my patch to simply stop recording video (which is what I'm guessing caused the overload) when I'm stressing the memory/processor too much?

I would be very thankful for any help! I'm going to do this workshop with some dancers in a couple of days, and would like to be able to trust my setup and use the video looper at the same time :-)

Cheers

/ nils

PS. I'm attaching the video looper if you want to have a look.