"Error Compiling Movie: Unknown Error" - HELPFUL TIP!
I just spent the whole weekend banging on this problem, and the solution was so obvious and yet also not that I thought it was worth posting here for future reference as it seems like this is a common problem in one regard or another.
I was using a project I'd exported out of a dozen times, and sequences that had also been exported numerous times, and suddenly this weekend every time I tried to export a quicktime using ANY codec, of ANY length, the export would crash and I'd get the mysterious 'unknown error'.
I removed nested sequences, I cut out effects, I tried removing pieces I thought might be causing it to stick, I imported sequences into a new project, copied and pasted into new sequences - all to no avail.
Until I realized, using old Spidey Senses from building computers in the 90's - that my FILE NAME had a "." [period] in it, carried over from the names of the sequences.
I had been working with a cut I was calling PREVIEW 1, and was using sequences I was calling v4 - but when I did revisions to those sequences I renamed them v4.1, and the Preview Cut v1 became PREVIEW v1.1, v1.2, v1.3.
I changed the names of the sequences to be v1_1, and - - everything is working totally fine with no errors whatsoever. Nests, effects, everything working flawlessly.
I can see many people easily making this mistake and hitting this most frustrating of errors both for rendering and for exporting, especially when Mac's seem to generally be OK with using "."s in file names. It can start a chain reaction of misery that is not necessarily intuitive to resolve.
It is REALLY DUMB that there isn't a simple message when exporting to an illegal file name that it doesn't just stop you right there and say "hey moron, that's an illegal file name and you should know that, try again and be smarter about it next time!"
Hope this helps some of you!!
