Premiere Pro: AVI or MP4 Import Issues Fix

Open your clip using Windows Movie Maker, save using HD or recommended settings, then import the new MPEG-4/H.264 file into Adobe Premiere Pro. This fix should work for both Sony Vegas and Premiere Pro.

An alternative is to use VLC or Square 5 (or another video conversion application) and covert your file to an uncompressed, editable file format that will be recognized by Premiere Pro.

Tips by tennesseejed93:
In older versions of CS, change .mp4 to .wmv.
Try these two codecs for mp4: AvidCodecsLE, and utvideo-14.0.0-win.

CamStudio Desktop Recording Software:
Resume Tutorial Mentioned:

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[SebastianGohCS]

I tried everything recommended, even by Adobe and nothing worked. This Movie Maker method WORKED! Thanks, it was a life saver.

[Maxxie]

After trying some other options, like renaming file to mp4 and installing quicktime, I finally tried this method, and it was the only one that worked. Thanks.

[arikelvara]

This saved me, in 2017! I used the video converter HandBrake! It would either Break my computer or break itself! Hand Brake was great for short 2 min vids, but not for a 30 Min presentation! Movie Maker is awesome and so are you!

[laurentblanchet]

Thank you! This is not an unconventional approach: it's a logical one! You just happened to be the first one to come up with this system. :)

[mikikoooo]

Thank you very much, was googling for hours to find answer to my "media pending" problem and this solved it!

[madcreativecommunity]

I was getting that "this file has no audio or video streams" message and other tutorials said to install QuickTime to fix it but that didn't work for me. This did! Thank you, I appreciate it!

[denabartnicki]

FYI Windows does not provide "Movie Maker" any longer. It has been bundled with the Photo App. Just open the movie in the photo app. I found that I had to make a small edit before it gave me the option to "save as". I just trimmed a few frames of black off the end and could do the save as. This worked like a charm....THANKS!

[shaninmi]

Wow, excellent! After trying all the complicated conversions... none of which worked.... this simple answer worked like a charm! So easy, and so workable! Thank you so very much; you've saved what's left of my sanity tonight!! :)

[TheFaustianMan]

This is amazing. And eloquent and brilliant solution! If you have win 7 professional. just do a search for movie maker then click get more windows essentials or some nonsense. You just need to install and download the moviemaker/photoviewer!

You have no idea how helpful video is! Seriously, you are a life saver. And all the "expert" adobe peeps, and hell even the programmers are entirely ignorant of this solution! BRAVO! Ideal for DOSBOX

[factorioshort]

Oh my god and I thought my recordings of the whole day is gone! Thanks a million!!!

[MozilloGames]

I was hoping for an alternative to just running them through another video editor, as that's what I HAVE been doing and it's just a pain...

[emmahayward]

thanks! This solved my problem in CS6 when the clips were showing up as a solid green and ony the audio worked. Did what you said with Movie Maker and voila. Success!

[luisleema]

You can also change the file extension (.mp4 to .mp3, for example), confirm, and change back to .mp4. It worked for me.

[newcoolnarutard]

DUDE YOU ARE A LIFE SAVER!!

No one on the adobe forums was helpful, and the only suggestions required a ridiculous amount of time. 

Thank you thank you thank you so much for this, I couldn't have done it without you!!!

[BlankYouTube]

hey i have been trying so hard to find out how what file format to use to import it in premiere pro because premiere rejects all of the formats so i found formats that people say it works and tried to download them, but it wont let me download them, either that or premiere wont let me import it. Could you help me?

[wreelsproductions]

Thanks so much for doing this. I was having an issue importing to Premiere Pro from security cameras and nothing else was working. Although it took a while to rerender the footage, this worked perfectly.

[CoTeCiOtm]

For greater versatility you can use Microsoft Expression Encoder, which allows you to tweak the quality, the format and other aspects of the conversion of the video (including working with 60 fps videos, which are converted to 30 fps if processed through Movie Maker). Just as a piece of advise, as the Movie Maker method didn't work for me because it crashed when saving the video but Expression Encoder did the work just right.

[tonebaxter]

Thanks Guy! I was having problems playing an avi animation created in HitFilm Express. Worked like a charm!

[awwesomei]

i dont have movie maker, but what i did is to convert the mp4 file to any supported pr vid format (like avi or mov). i used online converters and it worked

[Mirakle]

Hey guys, i had the same problem while trying to import .mov video's that ive made on my iphone. After searching on the internet i saw that installing the free version of quicktime could solve this problem and it worked for me. I am using windows tho, goodluck!