Media offline with no reason, importer reported a generic error

[valentinb0]

Hello, 

I have been constantly facing "media offline" issues for years. 2021 and this is still a thing. I have not moved any files, but still from time to time projects lose all media. I am not even kidding. 

This is something special though: When trying to locate a video file in the location that hasn't changed it says "Importer reported a generic error". 

To be honest, I am very tired of all these bugs and no fixes over the years, and I am considering moving to any software other than Adobe, just to not have anything to do with you any longer.

Can someone at Adobe, tell me what to do in this very special case of absurdity?

Valentin

[basil1891]

Could it be some 3rd party app that blocks the files, antivirus maybe?

[valentinb0]

Hi, thanks for the reply. No antivirus or anything similar. Currently, no Premiere project on this machine can now locate media. It is only when I change the name of the footage files first and then go into the locate dialogue, that it re-links media without the "importer reported a generic error" message.  The problem is -  I will not change the names of thousands of files 1 by 1, just because of this error. There must be a fix to this.

[basil1891]

From screenshot it looks like your sources are mostly (or maybe all?) screen recordings. Which can be the source of the issue (because of VFR - variable framerate). Try this steps:

1) Clean media cache manually - close Adobe PP/AME/AE, go to cache location and delete these folders: Media Cache, Media Cache Files, PTX, Peak Files

2) If #1 not help - turn off Hardware accelerated DEcoding in Preferences > Media... And again, clear media cache, as in step #1

3) If steps 1-2 not help - transcode your VFR-sources into CFR via Handbrake of ffmpeg, then replace/relink footage in the project. And again, clear media cache, as in step #1