One of the most popular video editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro, has quite a few quirks and gets the job done. However, much like any tech — hardware or software — it’s also prone to bugs and issues. One of the commonly reported issues is the ‘file type is unsupported compression type in Premiere Pro’.
The primary causes of the error are activation or caching issues and unsupported codecs or files.
This article discusses five ways to fix the ‘file type is unsupported compression type’ in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Also read: How to fix Premiere Pro error ‘There was an error decompressing audio’?
Clear the media cache
A corrupt media cache is the cause of a lot of different headaches in the program. Try clearing it to see if that makes a difference.
Step 1: Open Premiere Pro and head over to Edit, followed by Preferences and then Media Cache.
Step 2: Under Media Cache, click the Delete button to clear out your media cache.
Now restart Premiere and it should work just fine. Alternatively, you can just rename the old media cache and let Premiere generate a new one.Â
Check the file name or location
The next thing to do is to check the file name or the location. Several characters that may be acceptable as file names in Windows or macOS might not work in Premiere Pro. Additionally, if the file is stored in a location where Premiere doesn’t have read access, you might not be able to import anything from that specific location.
The easiest way to get around this error is to just rename the file to a simpler name (preferably without any special characters) and move it to a more accessible location such as the root folder of a drive partition.Â
Also read: The importer reported a generic error in Adobe Premiere: 4 Fixes
Check if you’re running a trial version
Trial versions of Premiere Pro often experience issues when importing AVCHD and MP4 files because the associated .dll files aren’t installed in C:\\Users\Public\Public Documents\AdobeInstalledCodecs
You’ll need to upgrade to the paid version of Adobe Premiere Pro to import these files, among other features.
Check the file name and location
The next thing to do is to check the file name or the location. Several characters that may be acceptable as file names in Windows or macOS might not work in Premiere Pro. Additionally, if the file is stored in a location where Premiere doesn’t have read access, you might not be able to import anything from that specific location.
If you’re facing issues with the AVCHD files, move the files to a different folder — changing the directory.
The easiest way to get around this error is to just rename the file to a simpler name (preferably without any special characters) and move it to a more accessible location such as the root folder of a drive partition.
Reinstall Premiere
Try reinstalling the software from scratch to fix your issues if nothing else works. Reinstalling Premiere is also rather easy, although we recommend you do it from the Creative Cloud panel and not through Windows settings.Â
All you have to do is open Creative Cloud. head over to All Apps and you’ll see Premiere listed below. Click the three horizontal dots next to it and select Uninstall. Once the uninstallation is complete, you can use the Creative Cloud panel to install Premiere again and hopefully resolve any issues you’re facing.Â
Also read: Instagram reels stuck on processing: 6 Fixes
