Apple Compressor 3 “unknown time remaining” WHY!??!

[Matt Wiebe]

Just finished unistalling the whole FC studio, reinstalled it, and IT’S STILL DOING IT!?!??! I’m gonna cry. Please someone help

[Mickey Power]

There’s an earlier thread about this. Seems to have happened to a few people including myself. All I did was delete the preferences for batch monitor (and I think) compressor.

Good luck.

Mickey

[Matt Wiebe]

hmm, sounds easy enough, but how to you ‘delete’ the preferences. Not quite clear on that. Thanks for your response.

[Matt Wiebe]

k, nevermind i figured out how to delete the preferences. But it still doesn’t work. If you can point me to the other thread where this happened, i’d love to see it. I’ve searched, but i can’t find it.

[Mickey Power]

Try deleting preferences which can be found in your home directory>library>preferences>com.apple.Batchmonitor.plist [or com.apple.compressor.Compressor.plist] then reboot.

Worked for me.

Mickey

[Terry Griffey]

Lots of folks are experiencing this same problem. In consolidating the information from many boards, there are many “fixes” that unfortunately sometimes work, which is no solution at all. What I see is that there is a connection between network state, active interface and the problem rearing its ugly head. The log files point to this also with ports (sockets) becoming unavailable. The executable that is throwing this exception looks to be an OS-level class that interacts directly with the hardware. This seems logical because the Intel Mac folks seem to be having many more problems than others. As an example, Compressor works in the hotel where I installed the software with the wireless card active. I take the laptop into work, with no network connection and it doesn’t work. I take it back to the hotel at night and it works again after deleting the prefs already described in this thread. Don’t know whether this is IP address specific or not but will keep investigating. If I get it isolated and consistent, I’ll take it to Apple. Thanks!
Terry

[John Atkins]

I had a similar problem with unknown timing – It was a file stuck in the Batch folder. I couldn’t even erase it. Even turning off the whole computer did not remove the file from the Batch folder. Here’s a solution I found on the Apple support site…and it works.

1. In Finder select go, go to folder
2. Enter: var/spool/qmaster
3. This will find a folder (oddly named with numeral & text). Trash the folders you see INside this folder (mine were called Shared & Jobs
4. In compressor, select the menu item Compressor/reset Background Processing.

John.

[Terry Griffey]

Have spent a lot of time working on this scenario and it appears to be two different paradigms.

You will receive the “unknown time remaining” if you have selected many filters and changes to the default presets. Tests have shown that you will eventually get a “time remaining” if you wait for a great deal of time if this is your scenario. Can’t do much about this. However…

You will also receive the “unknown time remaining” if your default network interface (when you installed Compressor) is not enabled and connected when you invoke the program. When I installed Compressor in my tests and my wireless interface was enabled as the default, Compressor would only run when the wireless interface is active and connected. I completely uninstalled FCS 2 and ran a script to remove QMaster and then reinstalled with the wireless interface disabled and the internal NIC connected and enabled. Compressor would only then run when the NIC was enabled and active. You can check this by using the Activity Monitor to observe the processes running on the box. You will find that the Compressor PIDS (processor thread IDs) die when they can’t find the network interface (after some retries) and you will also see this in the Batch Monitor log files. I’ve tested this hypothesis 4 times and the behavior is 100% consistent. More support for this hypothesis can be found in the system logs. Entries indicate that an OS level method call is failing because it can’t find the appropriate network interface. Have sent this data to Apple support for their evaluation.

The best way to fix this at this time before Apple addresses the issue (at a code level) is to delete the Compressor and Batch Monitor prefs and restart with the same network interface connected (as the default) when you installed Compressor. Use a terminal interface and go to /var/spool/Qmaster/ and delete all the folders/files waiting in the queue before you reboot.

This is not really a Compressor problem but a QMaster distributed networking problem from what I’ve determined from the log files and the executable exceptions.

Thanks.
TG

[Lookfrancisison]

hey. i know its probably been a while since you checked this forum and i am having the unknown time remaining error at a very bad time (given the fact that i do videos for 18th birthdays and whatnot and i have a deadline). i really need all the help i can get and ive done extensive research. so let me say this in what i think youre saying

you want me to:
a) open finder and in the search bar on the top right you want me to..
b) search “var/spool/qmaster”
c) look in the results for a folder that is “oddly named with numeral & text”
d) then trash/delete the folders in the folder that is “oddly named with numeral & text”
e) then open compressor and select the menu item compressor/reset background processing

could you maybe explain the last step better in something like this format: file>open | file>edit something like that?

[John Atkins]

Your interpretation is correct.

To help clarify the last point. Open Compressor program.

Compressor>Reset Background Processing…

{you are actually telling compressor then not to worry about what’s being processed in the background…i.e I think the files you’ve just deleted.}

Hope this helps.
John.