Compressor problems

Is anyone else having troubles with Compressor crashing? Every time I go to open Compressor 4, I get the spinning ball and have to trash the preferences, etc. Sometimes it works & sometimes it doesn't after I reboot. I've resorted to suing Compressor 3 as a workaround (since I don't go through fcxp - I always export the master file and bring into Compressor). Now Compressor 3 is starting to do the same thing. I'm wondering if there's something wrong with my computer, but why only Compressor problems? Everything else is fine. I'm using a Mac Pro. thx

I have no idea. But I can categorically say that Compressor did not work for me going on 5 years regardless of what computer I was on. I jokingly refereed to it as my compressor curse.

Weird thing is that it has worked for the last 2 years! So I must be doing something right!

Compressor does lots of weird things... when its working... try using Compressor Repair. When ever I have Compressor issues and a restart doesn't help, i run it... usually fixes it...

digitalrebellion.com/compressorrepair/

I tried that too and I've run out of options. Any recommendations for an alternative to Compressor? I've been using it for years and haven't used anything else. Just running out of patience and answers. thx

Compressor rarely fails me but in many respects it doesn't impress me either. It does a few things reasonably well. When it does fail it seems difficult to troubleshoot though. I'm hopping as Apple leaves Quicktime behind for AV Foundation and CoreMedia and related technologies, it'll get a complete overhaul.

It the meantime Telestream Episode is very powerful.
Alternately Sorenson Squeeze is good too.

BTW I find one good method of trouble shooting is creating a New User Admin account. That pretty much assures a completely fresh set of user settings and preferences. If you still have troubles there then it's a system, not user based problem.

Another thing to do, is to use Apple's Combo Updater for the OS as it does a much cleaner job than the software update through the App Store. Sometimes that can take care of system related issues.

I have been able to completely corrupt compressor many times, quite a cantankerous program when you link multiple mac's up for compression. The only thing that fixed it was to remove compressor using digital rebellions FCP remover program and reinstalling compressor. I tried everything and this was the only way to get compressor running again.

For some reason I have never had any problems with Compressor. I always export master file and let Compressor do the job. Can be slow but that is not a problem. Mostly I use x264 codec 3 pass before upload to Vimeo and the result is more than good.

Makki wrote: For some reason I have never had any problems with Compressor. I always export master file and let Compressor do the job. Can be slow but that is not a problem. Mostly I use x264 codec 3 pass before upload to Vimeo and the result is more than good.

I'd note that the x264 Quicktime component by MyCometG3 stopped development well over a year ago.
www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mycometg3/

This is likely due to the end of Quicktime frameworks as Apple moves to AVFoundation and CoreMedia.

Compressor is badly in need of a rewrite and I wouldn't be surprised if that's released around the time of OS 10.9 this summer.

I still use it with extremely good result. Take a look at this transpositionfilms.com/best-compressor-settings-for-vimeo-v2/

Makki wrote: I still use it with extremely good result. Take a look at this transpositionfilms.com/best-compressor-settings-for-vimeo-v2/

Yes, they're using the discontinued MyCometG3 x264 component. I suspect that will be broken with 10.9.

Never any issues with Compressor. But for any online service such as YouTube or Vimeo, this has never failed me.
www.macprovideo.com/hub/final-cut/prepar...quicktime-compressor

Thank you Ben for sharing this link. I will take a look at this. Hope anyway that Apple will not abandon x264