I get this message 'Unsupported format/damaged file. One of the necessary components may not be installed.'

I use an Hitachi HDD video camera. It came with image mixer 3 software that I use to import the video onto my PC. It saves the files as mpeg 2 and then in PE4 I can import the media into my project to make videos with.

This has always worked and I just made 6 small videos the other day in this manner. Now I just tried doing this today and I get that error message and the mpegs are unrecognized by PE4. I tried it with the mpegs that I used just 3 days ago and I have the same problem.

I have uninstalled and then reinstalled PE4, I used gspot to make sure I have the proper codecs for the mpegs, quicktime is up to date. I'm not sure what else to try.

Anyone have any ideas? I have some clips that I need to get made.

Thanks

While trying to solve this problem I went back to an old project that used an mpeg from this camera and loaded it. PE4 showed a preview for the clip and I watched it then imported my video from today and it's working fine now. I just wasted 5 hours messing with this and for some unknown reason it's running everything just as it always did.

Any solution is a good solution, djeeper.

MPEGs and video from hard disk cameras can be a bit iffy in programs like Premiere Elements. If it works, great! But sometimes they do work and sometimes they don't. (You can increase the odds they will work by downloading and installing the K-Lite Codec Pack -- but even that's no guaranteed solution.)

If you want a solution that works every time all the time, you'll want to convert any MPEGs into DV-AVIs before you bring them into Premiere Elements, per our FAQs at the top of this forum.
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