Trouble importing MP4

[Kristin5C9E]

I downloaded Premiere Elements for a trial version and importing MP4 files worked fine. I purchased a code and activated. Now when I import MP4's they appear fine in the timeline but in the workspace the color layers don't line up. It appears as unaligned purple and green images. When exported as MP4, they look like the the workspace version. These files open just fine in Media Player, Windows Movies and VLC Video Player. I even tried recoding with Handbrake.

I spent 45 minutes with a chat advisor who seemed fixed on a driver problem and got nowhere. Pretty sure it's not a driver issue. Any help is appreciated.

[John T Smith]

Do not count on Windows to be fully up to date when it comes to device drivers
Go to the vendor site to be sure you have an updated driver for your graphic adapter
•nVidia Driver Downloads http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
••for Premiere Pro and MAYBE Premiere Elements use the STUDIO driver, not the GAMING driver
•••such as (MAY not be the latest) https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/results/170344/
•ATI Driver https://www.amd.com/en/support
There are also intermittent reports that the newest driver is not always the best driver due to driver bugs or compatibility issues, so you MAY need to try an earlier driver version

[Peru Bob]

 Pretty sure it's not a driver issue. Any help is appreciated.

By @Kristin5C9E

It's either a graphics driver issue or a graphics hardware issue.

What graphics do you have and what driver number?

[Kristin5C9E]

NVIDIA GeForce 940MX, driver version is 27.21.14.6589, date 3/25/21. This particular graphics card only has gaming drivers, no studio version.

I reinstalled Elements and still have the same problem.

What's bothersome is that it worked fine during the trial.

[Peru Bob]

Try older drivers:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/

Choose a clean install of the drivers.

[Kristin5C9E]

This post is the result of an email from Adobe telling me to mark one of these answers correct. However, none of these led to a solution to my problem. I tried two driver versions and neither worked. Just how many older versions am I supposed to try when all of my other graphics intensive programs work fine? What did work is a different software package so I am dumping Premiere Elements. If it doesn't work easily with my graphics card, it's not worth it.

[Bill Sprague]

Since you're dumping Premiere Elements, may I ask what you will be using?  There are a lot of interesting choices.   

For what it is worth, one of the hardest things to do on this user forum is to establish that mass distribution software is in fact reliable.  It is not full of bugs.   With the enlessly wide variety of Windows machines, there will be some where settings, drivers, memory, etc will stop a program from running right.   I came to Premiere Elements 10 years ago when I couldn't get Sony's Vegas to work.  (It is now owned by Magix.)   If one can assume the software is stable, they can look for hardware issues and setting needing change.

I'm sorry you wern't able to get PrE to work.  Did you catch it in time to get a refund?