HELP HELP – Premiere Pro project files are corrupted

[Gonavy0806]

When I try to open the project file in xmlwrench, I don’t know which file to select / which extension to use. Thank you in advance for your help!

[Aanarav Sareen]

[gonavy0806] “I am having the same problem that many others have experienced with corrupted files in Adobe Premiere Pro.”

Define “many others” In the 3 years that I have used Premiere Pro, I have not once seen a corrupted project. In any case, do you have backup copies of your project? Take a look at the “Auto Save” folder.

Aanarav Sareen
premiere@asvideoproductions.com

[Gonavy0806]

I say “many others” after performing 2 hours of research on the internet. By corrupted files, I mean the error message “Project appears to be damaged and cannot be opened.” There are others with this same problem on quite a few forums. I did have AutoSave on, and also saved my project before and after each rendering. However, the autosaves are in no way current and furthermore are unable to find the location of the pictures and audio I have placed in the timeline. As for not being current, maybe since I manually saved every 3 minutes, Premiere Pro doesn’t AutoSave unless there’s been at least 5 minutes without a save?

The most promising result to fix my problem (from what I have read so far) is to use xmlwrench or a like program to clean up the file. [Suggestion on stevengotz.com/premierepro.htm], [also a very extensive post at https://ppro.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ then go to Question number 106].

Thanks for your reply; please let me know if you have any thoughts.

[Vince Becquiot]

It should still auto save… If it’s corrupted, there’s probably not much you can do. You could try importing the project inside a new project, but the likeliness of that working is pretty low. If you have to go back to the autosave files, Premiere should ask you to locate the missing footage.

Vince

[Mike Velte]

Auto Save creates (by default) 5 .pproj files in a seperate folder (preferences). It does this every 20 minutes (again default) so the most work one should loose is 20 minutes by opening the latest version.
While I have not had a corrupt project file, I have seen more than a few. Most are 50 MB + in size and created by newbies who edit in the timeline and not the source window.

[Gonavy0806]

As much as I wouldn’t want to admit it, I may be a “newbie.” What’s the difference between editing in the timeline and the source window? How is each process different? Thank you!

[Pat Mcgowan]

What does editing in the timeline vs the surce window have to do with the application’s performance?

[Ajay Sharma]

I have been editing in timeline for years, yet to see a corrupt project ( knock on the wood )

[Mike Cohen]

I had a corrupt project a couple weeks ago. The auto save saved my neck – luckily remembered what I did that was lost. Now I save a new version of my project every day, just to be on the safe side.

Mike

[Vince Becquiot]

Well, in my case, editing strictly in the timeline does give Premiere a whole more to chew on as far a system performance go.

In fact, there are many things that I used to do in the timeline such as resizing and cutting clips that would cause Premiere to freeze on rendered footage.

A corrupted footage though can be the cause of many things. Moving projects between drives, or USB sticks, even a bad hardrive wouldn’t surprise me. Also, if you are saving manually that often, I would look into changing the name once in a while.

Vince