“Error Compiling Movie. Unknown Error”

[Trevor Gauthier]

This post ended up confirming for me what I hoped it wasn’t the truth, so I figured I’d share so others may find a solution like I did. I was getting the dreaded Unknown Error and regretfully I have experienced it before so I knew a few of the causes, so I started with deleting clips, then moved on to trying to find the section that had errors, which proved to be a waste because the problem turned out to be all of my NESTED sequences.

In most projects to keep them clean I tend to use the nested sequence option quite regularly. I use it to help organize a design intros and lower thirds, since they typically get complicated and amass many layers. And for some clients I use the same intro and lower thirds multiple times for different videos so it is easy to drag in “intro” or “Jon Lower Third”. It also works nice if you want a clean fade or transition in/out.

So my work around for mine was to go into the nested sequences and copy all the layers I was using and then pasted them overtop of the nested sequence, being careful I didn’t overwrite anything important.

Now here is the real goofy thing about all this was I could go in and render the nested sequence no problem and for this client I have the same intro sequence on 9 videos and 8 of the 9 export and render with 0 issues. Only one makes me do this stupid re-render! WTF!

Some times I think Adobe adds these bugs because they get bored and need someone to talk too!

[Kayo Torres]

Hi guys! I’m new here but since I went through the same problem I decided to share my experience:

I faced the same thing while editing a video that had some png. within it and got the same error. I tried everything , from removing effects to unesting, renaming files, changing presets, everything. The thing here is that I was editing from my notebook since I’m on a trip, and I set my external HD as my default scratch disk for premiere. I didn’t bring my HDD with me and the scratch disks were still set for it… I simply changed the scratch disks to my computer’s C: storage and voila! Rendering as a charm 🙂

Funny how the solution was the most basic thing, but hope this helps someone!

[Nik Read]

Hi JP,

I’ve been searching the COW as I’ve been having these similar issues in Premiere and I wondered if, almost 2 years on, you ever had this resolved? Mine have only started about 6 weeks ago but I’m spending hours and hours trying to get my iMac to export something that it has always in the past done perfectly.

Hope you can help, I’m unsure of what to try next.

regards
Nik

[Andrew Doiron]

Not sure if this is a solution but it worked for me!

I’ve had a lot of problems trying to export sequences with MXF files within them. What did work was nesting the entirety of the sequence and then exporting the sequence containing the nest. No idea if that’ll work for everyone or why it works for me but let’s hope it’s a solution!

[Nik Read]

OK many thanks for the tip. What I’ve had to do is to uninstall the current version of Premiere and go back a version and all of a sudden that fixed it. Seemed like there must have been something in there that it didn’t like…

thanks again for the response,
Nik

[Bob Pierce]

This has become a major problem for me lately, and I went about trying most of these ideas to no avail. I spent hours experimenting (while the client waited anxiously) until finally I tried Walter’s suggestion, and sudden, bam, problem gone. Once again, Walter to the rescue – with a 2 year old post! Thanks Mr. B.
Bob

_____________
Robert Pierce
Director of Photography • Editor
http://www.robertpiercemedia.com

[Patrick Gillespie]

This is what worked for me, nesting the entire sequence. I have a big hunch it’s the .mxf files, and it’d be great if premiere figured this out- but for now, the nest!

[Brett Clark]

This is still a huge problem. It does tend to be specific to random files, but they are not solely mxf files…in my case it was a proRes file. BUT I did find an easy solution. Use Final Cut Pro X and worked like a charm. How bout them beans adobe!

[Jedd Manning]

Hi,
I didn’t find this forums answers helpful but I worked out how to fix it. I decided to post because a lot of people will find this helpful. All you need to do is go to Sequence Settings then go to Video Previews and change the codec. Then see if it renders. It worked for me and hope that you guys will find it helpful.

Jedd Manning

[Sergio Busato]

I had the same problem and by coping and pasting the entire sequence into a new sequence I managed to finally export my movie.

I hope it helps.