FCP/Compressor 'Selection contains no media' error

[JackoFluent]

Anyone come across this?

I'm trying to export a 35 minute FCP5 sequence directly to Compressor (to encode DV to MPEG2 and Dolby 2.0 for DVD) but receive the above error - even though I've done this type of export several times before without an issue (!)

The sequence is fully rendered, there are no 'in' and 'out' or other selections made (as far as I can see), and re-booting machine, FCP and Compressor doesn't help.

I've settled for an export to Quicktime Movie (same settings as sequence, self contained) and imported the resulting file to Compressor - but this adds 20-30 minutes to the process (writing the QT file) and two stages vs one (export to QT then to Compressor vs. direct into Compresor) which I worry will affect the final quality as the data is going through an additional processing.

What am I doing wrong??

[JackoFluent]

BTW I have searched other forums for a resolution to this issue with no luck - however, it does seem to be a 'known problem' in that others are experiencing the same error message with no explanation.

Any and all help on this greatly appreciated. Cheers, Nick

[terryj]

FCP 4.5 has a long standing issue where direct to
Compressor export doesn't work, and we users
have to ALWAYS use the export to QT.

There is no quality issue, because you are basically writing
your edits to a Quicktime [container] file that Compressor
will work off of. Now if you were writing Quicktime data to
a Quicktime movie, and chose a codec with low
compression type settings, then I would be worried.

apparently this may be something we FCP users will
have to live with.

[JackoFluent]

Thanks for the update Terry. One would have hoped that a known issue in 4.5 would have been resolved in 5! Well at least you say the quality is not affected going via QT

Interestingly I am finding this is an 'intermittent' problem - sometimes export to Compressor is fine, somtimes I get that error. Now if I could only narrow down the factors causing the difference I'd be a happy Vegemite. Too many variables tho to make this an easy task ....