Editing Vado HD Video With Premiere Elements 7

If like me you have had some frustration trying to get Premiere Elements to work with VADO HD video, without hanging on import, you may find this solution helpful.

When for a recent birthday I was the glad recipient of a new VADO HD pocket video camera, and a new sealed Premiere Elements 7, I was excited to get editing some footage. However I quickly ran into trouble - when importing the VADO footage into Elements it would either hang, or if it did import would apparently have no picture. Worse, because of the way the Elements video library previews video assets from all your projects by default, Elements would fail to start up and hang - purely because some VADO HD footage was in the library.

If Premiere Elements won't start because of a dodgy video file in the library

First, if Elements won't start, or hangs, because you have some incompatible footage in the library the simplest cure is to rename the suspect file, or rename the folder it is in, before you start elements. This will break the link Elements has to the file. Then Elements will start properly and give you a 'file not found' icon where the video thumbnail once was in the library. At this point you can simply click on it in the library and delete it.

Making Premiere Elements read VADO HD video files

In trying to solve this I have tried 2 conversion methods (one using Super, and another using Prism), but either of those means a laborious process of mass conversion, and you end up with duplicate files in different formats, and the converted files are either much larger than the originals, or a lower quality I found.

The best solution was simply to install the K-Lite Codec Pack. The installer checked for conflicting codecs as it went along, giving me the option to remove them automatically (which I did). I used the advanced installer option so I could choose what to install, and selected the "lots of stuff" option so I got pretty much everything - including the all important h.264.

Once installed I ran Premiere Elements, imported a native unconverted VADO HD video file and added it to the timeline with barely a pause in the action.

Forget laborious file conversion - try installing the K-Lite Codec Pack before you do anything else.

Still stuck?

If you still have problems you may find the following helpful:

Batch converting VADO HD
Handbrake Video Transcoder
Converting Video for Premiere