Videos distorted and wavy after dropping playback quality to medium and low

[510223708915q7d]

Please help. First time this has happened to me. I changed the settings on my go pro to 2.7k and 60fps. Now when I load the clips into premiere elements they can only play in high quality playback. Which slows down my computer. When I try to turn down the quality it becomes extremely distorted and wavy and can't see anything. When I pause it goes back to normal. Or back to high quality. But I can't do much in high quality because of my laptop.  Thanks.  

[Steve Grisetti]

What operating system are you using and which version of the program?

If you go to the Edit menu, what is listed on the General page under Project Settings?

Do you see an orange line along the top of your timeline, above your clip?