cs4 project loads to 95% then hangs

[Nils Hoover]

I have been editing a short film in cs4. Just finished up today and wanted to export as a dv avi, but every time I tried to export it, media encoder would start working and then tell me it couldn't find the project file any longer.

I saved the file, and restarted premiere, then it got stuck at 95% and the file never opened, and premiere more or less froze when I canceled.

Here is what I tried:

Restart premiere: Nope

Restart system: Nope

Import project into new project: Nope, It hangs the same way as loading the project

Import Project into After Effects: Works, but only helpful for rendering out exactly what I have, doing any editing in after effects would be a major pain.

Opening auto save: Sort of, but not really
I then tried an auto save but for some reason it stopped auto saving all of today, and the nearest auto save was yesterday at some point (I put in over 10 hours today at least).

Any ideas or insights? This seems to be a popular problem when I searched it in google for cs4, but none of the posts I looked at came up with any solution that worked.

[Steve Brame]

I'm having the identical problem. A project that I've been working on for a couple of weeks now will not load. I noticed yesterday that when I would scrub the timeline the PPro CS4 would just quit. I restarted, then saved under a different name and was able to continue working. However, today neither of them will load. I also tried creating a new project and importing the unload-able one, but the import process hangs as well. I tried copying the project (sans media) to another PC with CS4, and again, no load, so it doesn't seem to be either the media, or previews. I tried opening the 'auto-saved' versions, and none of them will. I tried opening other projects, and they load completely with no problems.

[Nils Hoover]

Hey man, I tried for another day and looked all over the web with out any real solution. If really don't have any auto-saves at all, then your only solution may be to open up the sequences in After Effects:
go to File > Import, navigate to the .prproj
It worked for me, but especially as far as sound that has been edited, it will probably be a nightmare.

Are you sure that none of the auto saves will open? If any of them will open, this was the most helpful solution I found for making sure it doesn't happen again:


"Bill was right on in his suggestion to search for a corrupt or bad asset. His technique to solve the problem did not work at all though. Going back to a previously auto-saved version of the project does not help much unless the project file itself is the bad asset. The project once saved under a new name still won't load in my experience. Also, if you try to export some part of the assets within the project, Adobe Media Encoder CS4 will fail to encode as well (another symptom of the bad asset hiding in your project workplace and sequence time-lines.

In my case, it turned out to be an avi movie asset that I changed from "avi movie with audio" to "avi movie without audio" outside of adobe premiere (using after effects cs4 in my case). So now the project thought there should be audio, but the audio was now removed.

To find the bad asset was pretty easy: First go back to a project version that you can load, then click on each asset in the project workspace area and try to copy the asset using the menu: edit -> copy.

If the asset is bad, a goofy error message will pop up including a source code file name [this has to be yet another bug in premiere to crash like this].

If the asset is good, the copy will report no error, so move on to the next asset, repeat until you find one or all bad assets.

To solve the bad asset load problem,re-import the asset under a new name. Go to your sequence, right mouse click on the asset in the time line, use the "replace with clip -> bin" command. Last step, select the new replacement asset from your bin."


Basically if you can open an auto-save, going through all of your imported assets, and hitting "control c" while one is selected will let you find a bad asset. I found one in mine and deleted it and didn't have any more problems.

That post is found at the bottom of this thread:
Adobe Forums: Premiere CS4 will not load project

If you aren't updated, it probably won't fix the problem, but it is worth a try:
Premiere cs4 update - Adobe - Premiere Pro : For Windows : Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 4.2.1 update : Thank You

Don't be afraid to get real technical support from adobe on this one, I didn't find any real solution for this on the web (looking at other threads from other people who had the same problem on like 10 different forums).
Hopefully adobe would have some sort of recovery tool to go in and fix it and give you a fixed file back. Worth a shot any way.

Good Luck.

[Steve Brame]

Yeah, it doesn't appear to be an imported asset, because I've taken all media out of the loop by renaming the media's folder, and even took the project - without the media - to another PC, and it still wont load. It's really strange that with a .prprj file being XML, it seems that it should be a simple task to determine what's corrupting it.

[Nils Hoover]

No, it's not the actual media itself, it is the asset, or the reference within the project file. In other words your files may be all fine, but the link within your project which calls up the media is corrupt. It isn't something that you can fix by moving folders around, you have to be able to delete the asset, which is within the file.

Any way, it seems as if you don't have any auto-saves, so your best bet is hoping that Adobe support will fix your problem for you, or opening it up in after effects.

Another thing you might try (which might be expensive/time consuming depending on how you roll) is if you can get a hold of cs5 and open up the project in that. Don't have any idea if it would work, but I would hope that adobe has fixed the issue in the latest iteration.

[Steve Brame]

It opened in AE, so now I at least have an easy roadmap to follow to rebuild.