[Bjorn]

I just had the same error. After updating the system to 10.3.8, compressor wouldn’t open at all. I reinstalled Compressor 1.2.1 and Compressor could open again. But then I got the “could not connect to background process” message.
To fix it, I simply repaired permissions on the drive. Seems to work fine now.

/ Bjorn in Sweden

[Bjorn]

I have sent in a report to FCP feedback at Apple.
Let’s hope they can fix this.

/ Bjorn in Sweden

[Bjorn]

I have had the same problems with a “sticky timeline”. The spinning beach ball appeared several times every time I tried to trim in the timeline using the ripple/roll tools.
I posted recently on this and got the suggestion to move the current sequence and the clips I needed to a new project.
And it worked! I just dragged the stuff I needed to a new project (Alt+drag to copy) and the new project runs smoothly.
It does not seem to be caused by large projects, since I had the problem before the project was more than a couple of MB large, and it doesn’t seem to depend on the complexity or size of the sequence, since it worked after I moved the sequence.
So my theory is that what causes the problem are projects with a lot of stuff/info in the browser.
The project I edited had about 8 hours of footage for a 20-minute film. I captured the video clips in large chunks, added markers for start and stop of each take, then created subclips from those markers. I imported the audio from BWF files. Then I synched video and audio and got new, merged subclips. So I had two or three copies of each video and audio clip in my ten or so bins. But when I moved the things I needed to a new project, I didn’t bring the original captured video clips, only the merged subclips. So, for instance, the new project has no large chunks full of markers. I think the comlexity of this information in the browser is what causes our problem.
Which sucks for someone working on fiction films shot on film or at least with separate sound that has to be synched.
Lets hope Apple has fixed this for version 5, or we will all have to switch to Avid where it works flawlessly even for feature-length projects! 🙂

2x1GHz G4, 1.5 GB RAM, FW, FW800 and soft-RAID IDE disks, FCP 4.5, OSX 10.3.8, Aurora Igniter X etc.

/ Bjorn in Sweden

[Bjorn]

Thanks guys. Good suggestions. I’ll try them as soon as I can find the time to update the system etc. I thought these things might do the trick, you confirmed it for me.
Now all that remains is to see if it works… 🙂

/ Bjorn in Sweden