A regular subscriber to the podcast & emailer with great tips — Phoenix-Brian — wrote to me his experiences and findings with some recent problems with Compressor. Having experienced these issues firsthand (haven’t we all wanted to throw our Mac out the window in dealing with Compressor?) — I wanted to share his email, which includes some links to some key troubleshooting documents for dealing with some of these issues.

I must also mention that is problem seems unresolved at this point — suggestions are welcome in the comments to this post.

Check out some of Phoenix-Brian’s work these places:
http://phoenixbwp.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc
http://www.youtube.com/user/phoenixbwp

Phoenix-Brian writes:

I had some footage I wanted to play with, to get the correct settings for the web/iPhone, and de-interlacing, etc. Final Cut Pro 5.0.4 ran like it should; exported to Compressor, got the settings I wanted, then clicked submit.

BAM! A small window popped up saying: “Unable to connect to background process”

Technorati Tags: apple, DIY, encoding, final cut pro, howto, iphone, leopard, mac, multimedia, osx, podcasting, troubleshooting, tutorial, video

So, like any error message, I tried again, same thing. I checked all the settings I wanted, submit, no go. So I closed Compressor. Ran the sequence to QT Conversion, to make sure that worked, and it did.

So I made a self-contained movie of the sequence, and then opened Compressor and dragged the movie in. Set the settings and clicked submit. “Unable to connect to background process”. Now I am mad (you know the real word), I shut down, unplugged all the cords, waited one minute, and plugged everything back in. Booted, and tried the movie file in Compressor; “Unable to connect to background process”.

So, off to Apple Support for Compressor:
http://www.apple.com//support/compressor/

And the first thing under the heading Troubleshooting: Unable to connect to background process

Now, this article was very helpful, I followed the instructions to the letter for Compressor 2.

Everything seemed alright, but after reinstalling the same error. Now what am I going to do? I don’t have the cash to get the new FCS2, and this version works, just not with Leopard.

I did a test, I wiped the iMac, and yes I have a back up, but it is all the data and apps I want…Brought her up to 10.4.11 and installed iLife - iWork 06, then installed Final Cut Studio 1(fcp5,dvdsp4,etc), software updated, and repaired permissions. Shut down for a few, and fired up again.

FCP5.0.4 worked, Compressor 2.0.1 worked, and I did several different settings to make sure. All was good. Then the test.

I put the Leopard disc in, and upgraded to Leopard. I did a clean install of Leopard last week, and just ran into this problem, so upgrading should not hurt as a test, and I just wasted 2 whole days.

So when Leopard was up, and FCP was running, I tried to export to Compressor, that part worked, but clicking submit, didn’t, same message. Ran software update to 10.5.1, and tried again after repair permissions and reboot. No go.

Reading the Apple forums, this post in particular:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1197900&start=25&tstart=0

No one has a fix, and it is happening across Compressor and these web sites too:
http://www.kashum.com/blog/1152611689
http://www.scottsimmons.tv/blog/2008/01/11/compressor-hatred-resolved/

Point this to your listeners, and see what the response is…I can work without compressor but when I did all my tests in Tiger, Compressor squeezed the file down more than Quick Time alone…

Filed under: Troubleshooting, Video