Premiere Pro 22 Footage Linking Errors and Truncating of Video File Names on Windows 10
Adobe Premiere Friends - I could use some help!
My main iMac edit system crashed today and I had to switch to running Premiere Pro 22.2 on a PC workstation running an up to date 64-bit Windows 10 Pro OS i7-6950x CPU @ 3.0 GHz with 128gb of RAM. The problem I'm having with the Windows machine has to do with an inability to link a project to its footage, which had worked perfectly well when I'd been editing on my Mac. Both systems have been working off a local copy of the same project and footage on the internal hard drive via dropbox.
The project opens fine on the PC, but I'm unable to link any of the footage. When I direct Premiere to the proper directory and relink using exact matching file names, it identifies the file correctly, but when I hit "OK" I repeatedly get a File Import Failure dialog window with a message "The importer reported a generic error."
To be sure it wasn't a codec issue and that the files were fully downloaded to the internal drive on the PC, I tried directly importing one of the clips from the internal hard drive into the project, and the file imported and played, but with a truncated 8 character DOS style name. The original file names are significantly longer but contain no illegal characters. Also, the files are all generated by iPhone's or Androids but given that both types of files will import directly and play, I don't think that's part of the problem.
The reason I can't just start over and work with the truncatd file names is that there are multiple editors working remotely on different aspects of the same project, having the file names switch in one of them will cause significant issues down the road when it comes time for color correction, mixing and mastering and it will become impossible to identify which file the truncated Premiere ID should link to on another system (or down the road if the project needs to be revisited).
To make things more confusing, one of our editors is working remotely using the same dropbox files locally on a Windows 10 machine. He did have a similar problem when he initially tried to link the files before they were fully downloaded, and the first edit he passed me had similar truncated names. But he was able to go back and relink the footage without having to import and truncate the clip names. In my case, I've made sure the files are local and can play all of them from finder - I've even rebooted the system twice - no luck.
Additionally, I'm able to open a completely different project with clips with long file names that was started on my iMac, opened by a different editor on a PC and passed back to me, and I can open that project and everything links perfectly in Premiere on my Windows 10 PC. The two big differences between the project where I'm not having issues is that the footage is on a local external hard drive (not internal hard drive via dropbox) and the footage was not generated by an iPhone or Android Phone camera.
Any thoughts out there as to what might be going on?
