FCP to Compressor=spinig ball
 

Help! Im having a big problem this morning. I have a 16 minute video Im trying to export from FCP to compressor. When I export the compressor canvas menu opens and I can enter settings but when I submit it just sits there. If I move my mouse off compressor onto fcp it gets the spinning ball. If I quit compressor the canvas goes away but the program is still open in the top bar area. And of course all I get is the spinning ball. Any Ideas as to whats going on?

see here for how others (and myself) submit jobs to compressor:

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=107923

Best to use a full quality reference movie as input for compressor.
Best,
Dino

John:
Is the footage heavy with any filters like magic bullet? You might try placing the project file on your desktop, close out FCP and then open up compressor. Import the project file that you placed on your desktop into compressor and try it from there.
John

John,
It's my experience when exporting to Compressor directly from FCP, you cannot use FCP (thus the spinning beach ball) while compressor is, well compressing...

That's why when you move the cursor over FCP you get the beachball. But your not "locked up" - you can access other applications, just not FCP.

If you need to continue working in FCP and have Compressor working in the background, Export your sequence from FCP as a QT file, open Compressor, then drag/import your QT sequence in to compressor and go to work...
This will allow you to go back to FCP (no beachball) while compressor is chugging away on your file...

Lonnie

Also, if your unsure of what's going on in compressor because there is no blue "percent completion" bar - i found that there actually is one...

It's hidden in the history tab. Click there and a progress bar will let you know what's going on, or at the least let you know - it's working on it!

Best of luck,
Lonnie

Or, launch BatchMonitor (in Applications/Utilities). This is Apple's official way to monitor compressor jobs - whether they're running on a cluster or just the one local machine.

Best,
Dino