10.4: Fix Compressor background process error

Oct 20, '05 04:42:00AM

Contributed by: X@vier

Tiger only hintLike many others, I have run into the "Unable to Connect to Background Process" error when trying to submit video files to the Compressor utility. I've looked all over the net, including the Apple web site for a fix and found nothing truly useful. The best Apple seemingly can do is to ask the user to reinstall the software.

After many hours of reading and testing, I think I have found the fix for this problem. When you install Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 with Compressor, at the end you get a message box asking you if you would like to fix Qmaster. You would think that this would fix the Qmaster problem, but it doesn't seem to do so. This is the reason that you get the background process error message -- the Qmaster process is not running in the background, and this is what Compressor needs to work properly. What you can do to get it working again is run this command in a Terminal window (you will need your admin password):

sudo /Library/StartupItems/Qmaster/Qmaster start
This will only work until you restart your computer again.

To get the Qmaster working properly again permanently, what you can do is this ... I haven't tried these steps, but I'm sure they would work. Remove the Qmaster folder from the StartupItems folder and restart the computer. After the computer has restarted, put the Qmaster folder back in the StartupItems folder and restart again. This time you will get the message box to fix Qmaster. If that doesn't work, you can (I have done this and it works) copy the Qmaster folder from a computer that has Compressor working properly and replace it with the one that's not working, restart to get the message box to fix the Qmaster again.

That's all you need to do to get Compressor working again, and not do a full reinstall like Apple asks us to do.

[robg adds: I can't confirm this one...]

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