Analyzing the files that fail to open in contrast to those that do open just fine shows one glaring problem: All lines in the project.prel file (which is just an XML file) where there should be decimal numbers in <StartKeyframe> or <Keyframe> tags are damaged. Example:
Correct version:
<StartKeyframe>-91445760000000000,100.,0,0,0.,0.,0.,0.</StartKeyframe>
Defective version:
<StartKeyframe>-91445760000000000,100,,0,0,0,,0,,0,,0,</StartKeyframe>
So apparently Premiere Elements at some point got confused by European locale settings and decided to save decimal values using the European decimal separator (comma) instead of the US decimal separator (dot). Of course it's then impossible to open that file correctly ever again.
Fortunately, at least in my tests, there are only three kinds of decimal values in .prel files:
- integer floats:
1., 0., 100.
- the single value
0.5
- double precision floats:
0.16666666666666666, 1.000000000000000000000000
This makes it possible to fix the file using a regular expression replace. If your editor supports Perl-style regular expressions, you can search for
,(?:(?=[,<]|\d{10})|(?<=\b0,)(?=5\b))
and replace all with
.
This will replace all erroneous decimal commas (i. e. those that are either followed by another comma, an opening angle bracket, a decimal fraction of at least 10 digits, or the number 5 (but only if that comma is preceded by the single digit 0)) with a decimal point.
After that (be sure to back up your .prel file before you do this!), the file can be opened again correctly. However, as soon as it's saved again, the error is re-introduced.
Therefore, if someone has an idea how to actually fix this problem instead of patching it up with an admittedly wonky regex, I'd be most grateful.
One hint as to what the underlying problem might be: Around the time the error was introduced, Premiere spontaneously opened a little dialog window that said (in German) something like
"Premiere Elements is updating a component. Information is being transmitted..."
While this window was displayed, two Win7 UAC boxes popped up, asking me to allow the Windows Regserver to update my system. The actual commands it needed approval for were
C:\Windows\System32\regsvr32.exe /s
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Elements 10\mc_dec_mpa_ds.ax"
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Elements 10\mc_dec_mp2v_ds.ax"
and
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\regsvr32.exe /s
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Elements 10\32\mc_dec_mpa_ds.ax"
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Elements 10\32\mc_dec_mp2v_ds.ax"
(line breaks inserted for clarity).
The first time around, I allowed these actions (which in retrospect may have been a bad idea...); now this happens every time I'm trying to open a "patched" project file. It doesn't matter whether I now allow or refuse it - either way, Premiere writes a corrupted project file when I save my project.
