Compressor's Create Disc action failing with bogus error
If you're like me, you may have frequently encountered a problem creating a Blu-ray image with Compressor 4.2.2 where it successfully generates the audio and video files ("Dolby Digital.ac3" and "H.264 for Blu-ray.264") from a Final Cut Pro X project only to have the Create Disc action fail with a bogus error.
You first get a false "There is not enough space on the disc to complete the operation.", even if you have hundreds of GB's of space free on the working volume. If you click Retry, it spins for a while and then you get "The operation couldn't be completed. (DSPPublishing error -1024.)" My suspicion is that the retry case was never properly tested and doesn't actually work.
Here's some things to try to get around this roadblock:
- In the past, I've sometimes found that rebooting the Mac and then immediately initiating the batch in Compressor will succeed.
[Most recently, this hasn't worked for me anymore.] - Sometimes I was able to get Final Cut Pro to successfully perform the job via the Share menu. You can set up most (though not all) of the needed options in Compressor, save them as custom settings and then add them to the Share menu in Final Cut Pro. (Note the somewhat hidden ability in the bottom left corner of the Share window to switch between the output files and therefore edit some of the options in Final Cut Pro.)
[This workaround does't work for me any more since Final Cut Pro 10.3.2 uses Compressor 4.3.1 and screws up the order of 5.1 audio channels. It outputs L C R Ls Rs LFE instead of the old L R C LFE Ls Rs, thus ruining your Blu-Ray. See below on how to use an older version of Compressor.] - After a failed run of Compressor 4.2.2, you can actually re-run just the Create Disc action (and not have to spend hours regenerating the perfectly good audio and video output files) by following the steps I provide below. I haven't found a way to do this with Compressor 4.3+.
[Most recently, my many attempts to re-run all failed with the same bogus error.] - Switch your Compressor settings to actually burn the disc rather than create a disc image. If the disc is created successfully, you can then use Disk Utility to create an image from the Blu-ray disc and be able to repeat the burn as needed in the future.
[This is what finally worked for me with my most recent project.]
--------- How to repeat a previous Create Disc action with Compressor 4.2.2 and earlier:
The Create Disc action is performed by an application embedded within Compressor's application bundle and it is run using a temporary, generated XML file for your project. (If you need to locate the Create Disc application for any reason, right click on Compressor and choose "Show Package Contents", then navigate to Contents / Plugins / Compressor / CompressorKit.bundle (show package contents again) / Contents / EmbeddedApps / Create Disc.)
You can locate the Create Disc XML file after a failed run by opening the /var folder with the Finder's "Go to Folder" command. Then search for the file extension ".1cdvd". For example, mine was in: var/folders/h9/270_0m7s0kn59y08bgh_ts600000gn/T/
Copy the ".1cdvd" file out and rename it for convenience. You can edit it with TextEdit or BBEdit or similar. Inside you'll see a description of the parameters for the Create Disc action. When you're ready to run the action again, just right click and select "Open with" and choose the appropriate version of Compressor.
Note that Compressor 4.3 and newer doesn't seem to work with this XML file any more and I haven't been able to locate a corresponding file for that version.
--------- How to use an older version of Compressor:
If like me and you've found that the current 4.3.1 version of Compressor reorders the output of your 5.1 audio channels (mixing up the Center and Right channels as well as the LFE and surround channels), you'll want to restore an older copy of Compressor 4.2.2 from your system backups alongside your newer copy of Compressor.
If you make sure this older copy of Compressor is already running when you choose to send a project to Compressor from Final Cut Pro X, it will go to that version. However, you may find that you need to first launch and then quit the newer version of Compressor at least once during a session before the older copy will perform any batches.
