[Solved] ‘Codec Missing or Unavailable’ HEVC in Premiere

Premiere Pro will pop up “Codec missing or unavailable” message when it failed to import a video. Recently, lots of Adobe users have encountered this error while adding HEVC .mov clips into Premiere Pro CC even the most recent version. In some cases, changing extension from .mov to .mp4 will work, but this won’t solve all issues. At the present time, transcoding to an intermediate codec would be a workable solution. Here in this post, we’d like to display a workaround to transcode HEVC H.265 files to Prores 422 or DNxHD for use in Premiere Pro flawlessly.

“Codec missing or unavailable” issues editing HEVC H.265 MOV media in Adobe Premiere
Before we start conversion, let’s see “codec missing or unavailable” issues regarding to editing HEVC H.265 MOV media in Adobe Premiere:
1) “I use iPhone 7 plus and recorded 1080p 30fps and 60fps using the new HEVC codec. My issue is that none of the mov videos are accepted by Premiere Pro CC 2017. I get a message says that “Codec missing or unavailable”. What am I missing? How do I get the footage to read properly?”

2) “A client gave me a bundle of video clips shot on the new iPhone X. They are encoded with HEVC codec in a MOV wrapper. I am using Premiere Pro CC 2018 on my MacBook Pro and when I go to import the HEVC MOV footage I get the error “codec missing or unavailable”. I try to change the .mov to .mp4, but this doesn’t work for me. Any thoughts on this? Thanks ahead of time for the help.”

If you are having the same exact issue with HEVC MOV clips in Premiere Pro, as we’ve stated in the beginning, transcoding them to ProRes 422 or DNxHD would solve the issue. HD Video Converter is a good program to do this. It is available on both Mac and Windows platforms. You can put the HEVC MOV files in Video Converter and convert them to ProRes or DNxHD codec as you specified.

How to encode HEVC files for use in Premiere without “codec missing or unavailable” error?

Here’s what you need
HD Video Converter (simply download the proper version depending on your computer’s OS)

Step 1: Start up HD Video Converter as an HEVC H.265 to Premiere Pro Converter.

Step 2: Click ‘Add File’ to import your source media to the program.

Step 3: Select output format
* If you are on a Windows PC, from the “Profile” bar, choose ‘Avid DNxHD 1080p (*.mov)’ as output under ‘Avid Media Composer’ column. (See the screenshot above)

** If you are on a Mac computer, choose ‘Apple ProRes 422 (*.mov)’ as target under ‘Final Cut Pro’ catalogue.

*** Note that this converter program can only output Apple ProRes and DNxHD video up to 1080p, if you want to preserve 4K quality of your source files, you need to select “4K Video” > “4K H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Video (*.mp4)” as target format. To export 4K files, please make sure your computer has enough power to process 4K. If not, simply select Apple ProRes or DNxHD as output format depending on your OS.

Step 4: Custom video and audio settings (for advanced users)
Click ‘Settings’ button, the ‘Profile Settings’ panel pops up, on which you are able to modify video and audio settings like resolution, bit rate, frame rate, sample rate and audio channel.

Step 5: When ready, click ‘Convert’ to start transcoding HEVC H.265 files to Premiere Pro supported format. As soon as the conversion is complete, click ‘Open Folder’ button to locate the generated files and now you are able to open them in Premiere Pro for further editing smoothly.

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