Premiere Elements 2021 frozen halfway through project

[johnmpacnw]

I'm doing my first project using mainly footage shoot from my iphone 11 pro, plus stills and a few HD clips from old family videos mixed in. The project settings were set by the first clip added to the timeline (an iphone clip).

I was going along fairly smoothly with the occasional freeze up, until there was about 8 minutes of media in the timeline.  Up to that point, a message popped up a couple of times indicating that I did not have the proper codecs to support HEVC/HEIC, but after following the instructions, it appeared that the codecs were already installed, so I powered on.

Now, with 8 minutes of footage:

• only a handful of the dozens of clips in the timeline and asset panel have a visual thumbnail
• the project won't play, and when I try to scrub, the only clip that plays is the HD clip
• the project won't close normally, and I have to use the task manager to  close the project

I've also tried:

• uninstalling and reinstalling the program
• increasing my RAM from 16 to 32 GB
• contacting the Adobe chat (but they don't recognize my product as registered even though it is, so I can't start a session)
• updating my drivers from the computer, videocard, etc.

My Adobe program and project files are on my (D:) hard drive, as my SD boot drive only has 17GB of space left.  The cache files end up on my SSD boot drive, and I delete them when prompted.  All of the other scratch files are set to store on the 1 TB hard drive with 700GB still available. 

I've included below my system info, video card info and media info for both the iPhone and HD clips, as well as a screen shot of the General project settings.

Is it a codec issue, hardware issue, project management issue (i.e.user error)?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Video card

 iPhone clip

HD clip

General project settings

[Peru Bob]

•  

my SD boot drive only has 17GB of space left.

By @johnmpacnw

That is likely causing at least some of your issues.  That really isn't enough room for system and temp files.

[johnmpacnw]

Thanks for your note.  It could be.The only Adobe files on the C: drive are the cache files.  The program, scratch disks, project files and project assets are saved on the ample D drive. 

Having said that, I was ready to take my computer to my local computer shop and upgrade the boot drive to a higher capacity SSD in order to accommodate the program, AND add a third drive, an SSD SATA dedicated to house the project files/assets...then I thought I'd try the APE community to see if there were some other potential no-cost solutions.  I may still keep that appointment.

[Ann Bens]

Iphone 11 pro, plus stills and a few HD clips from old family videos mixed in.

The old family video are not HD but SD (Standard Definition) Very low quality compared to the Iphone,

[johnmpacnw]

Thanks for pointing that out, Ann.  My bad for mis-identfying the nature of the older clips.  Ironically, I don't think that clip caused the issue I'm having.  I was receiving the HEVC/HEIF error message before adding the SD clip at minute 3, and was able to limp along to minute 8 with adding no additional SD clips until the project crashed, and even after the project crashed, the sole SD clip was the only clip that I could still run my playhead over and scrub properly.

Update: after leaving the project open for the last four hours, the thumbnails populated on the time line and in the project assets folder.