[SOLVED] Premiere Pro: “The importer returned a generic error” when loading media

(Fellow video dudes: while you’re here for help with Premiere Pro’s bad behavior, maybe you’d also be interested in my article about why you shouldn’t be shooting with flat, log, or “cinema” picture profiles. It’s the second most popular article on the site. The one on disabling Adobe’s ever-growing log files might also be of interest.)

I recently had a Premiere Pro project I’d been working on for a couple of weeks that refused to import some clips. When I attempted to link the media again, I’d get a box that said “the importer returned a generic error.” What’s especially annoying is that the failing clips were from the same camera as several successful clips; there seemed to be no reason for these three or four clips to simply not work and I could play them in a media player just fine. The failure didn’t even happen after an update because I’d been working in the project using the latest updated version.

I checked file permissions on the network server and everything was good.

I deleted all of the Adobe caches and manually killed all Adobe processes in Task Manager.

I restarted the computer and even tried opening an auto-save of the project, yet all of these failed to resolve the problem.

Adobe suggests that these generic errors on import can be caused by activation issues, so I signed out of my Creative Cloud account and signed back in. Didn’t work.

In the end, what I had to do was open Creative Cloud, uninstall Premiere Pro (keeping preferences), and reinstall Premiere Pro. No reboot needed! I still don’t know why this worked, but it did. Maybe my experience and solution will save you some valuable time troubleshooting this odd error.

27 thoughts on “[SOLVED] Premiere Pro: “The importer returned a generic error” when loading media

    1. Glad it helped! You have some nice stuff on your Vimeo channel. Keep on snipping those clips, friend.

    1. You may have to remove all Creative Cloud software and completely delete all of your profile information in the various AppData folders. There are threads on Adobe support that explain how to purge everything.

      1. Do you have a link to the adobe support page you mentioned? I cannot find it. I deinstalled via a tool I had to download and deleted all adobe folders in the appdata subfolders.

        1. Unfortunately I don’t. If you type the exact error directly into the Adobe Premiere Pro support forum then it should come up somewhere in the list.

  1. This is of immense help! Huge time-saver. Thank you very much for the excellent tip!
    Bill.

  2. Didnt work for me unfortunately. ive tried uninstalling and reinstalling as well as logging in and out of CC.

  3. Hi there everybody,

    SOLVED VERY SIMPLY.

    I also encountered this same problem… many times and with lots of files. Basically, all you need to do is let Premiere search for the files again. if what works for you is to rename the file extension then go for it, if you want to move the files to a new folder that’s fine, I just changed the Drive letter (Disk management in windows) and let Premiere locate all the footage once more. Everything relinked just fine, NO “importer reported generic error” thing and nothing to do with QuickTime and codecs. DON’T convert your files or uninstall and reinstall anything, I did that and wasted my time.

    Cheers.

    1. Great info! After trying an extension rename (to .MTS) which worked but added some weird motion effects, as well as reinstalling PP (as per OP, which didn’t fix the problem), all I did was MOVE the problem footage (but probably could have copied it as well, just wanted to save space) to a new folder and all was good. Simple fix: Move (or copy) footage to a new folder, then re-import. Worked for me.

    2. Thank you SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO
      Much I just moved the effected files into a new folder and the problem is gone.

  4. I had been struggling since few days due to this issue. Updated drivers, reverted back to PP-2018, deleted preferences, deleted cache files and what not.
    You saved me dude. Just renaming the folder worked like wonder.
    Thank you for giving such a simple solution.

  5. I was having this issue specifically with .insv files from an Insta360 One X. My solution was to use the ‘Replace Footage…’ option instead of ‘Link Media…’ Worked like a charm. The catch is you gotta do it one by one, so it worked out great for me since I only needed to relink six clips, not hundreds.

  6. I came across this issue today. What i did was, I just renamed the file and used the link media option and re linked it again. Worked for me. Hope this helps someone.

  7. Just let you guys know, I fixed these issues by copying my clips to another location on my computer, it fixed.

  8. Thanks so much, I built a new PC and had this problem with my old projects.
    Reinstalled without rebooting,
    Still came up with missing media,
    Manually located 1 file and Premiere instantly found all the other “missing” media.
    Couldn’t find preview files though, no big deal.

    1. I always set up my projects to store preview files in the project folder (I always make a folder and put the Premiere project and all project-specific footage in that folder) and to store all other cached data in C:\adobe_caches (peak files, conformed audio, etc.)

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