Canon Vixia HF R400

I have a new Canon Vixia HF R400 and I am using Premiere Elements 11. When I add video to my timeline the audio plays fine, but my video drags or stops altogether. Any suggestions?

You've written that you put your video files on an external drive.  You didn't say anything about that drive or how it is attached to your new laptop, but I suspect a major bottleneck.  Your computer may not be able to read those huge files off an external hard drive fast enough for smooth preview.
Bill,
This is a very good point, and were I Nancy, one that I would explore.
There are two prime elements, that will affect video performance, with HDD's (internal or external): the disc's speed (both RPM and transfer speed), and then the connection type. Many externals are 5400 RPM, where at least 7200 RPM is needed for smooth playback. Next, if the connection is either USB 2.0, or FireWire 400 (IEEE-1394a), then the transfer of data will be too slow for really smooth playback, and especially with HD (High Def) material. If the connection is FireWire 800 (IEEE-1394b), it should be OK, and if USB 3.0, or eSATA, it should be good to very good.
Your computer is also new if it has Win 8 on it.  Windows 8 is new to video editing too.  The combination of Windows 8, PrE11 and editing 35Mbps files is new territory.  You chose a computer with an Intel i5 processor and 6 GB of ram.  I do not mean to be rude, but that is "mid grade" for editing "high grade" video files.  I had a similar laptop with Windows 7.  Doubling the RAM made a huge difference editing 28Mbps video files.  If you are going to do a lot of video editing, you may have to upgrade the RAM.
An i5 will struggle with HD material w/ the H.264 CODEC, even without that high 35Mbps Bit-Rate, as H.264 takes a lot of CPU power to process. The only way around that is by having a very fast CPU, or more of them.
With Win7-64, 4GB of RAM is just about enough to run the OS, with almost nothing left over for programs, and especially an intense operation, such as video-editing. Six GB is certainly better, but I have not seen any benchmarks on RAM with Win8, so do not know if it's resources usage is equal to Win7, or perhaps a bit more. I recommend 12 - 16GB RAM as about the minimum for video editing on a 64-bit OS. This will cut back on the OS's need to rely on slower Virtual Memory, when running a program, like PrE.
Also, with a new computer, unless it was home-built, or built specifically by someone, who knows about video-editing, will have tons of bloatware - programs that might seem neat, but load at bootup, and sap resources, often getting in the way of the utilization of the computer's resources for video-editing.
Some very useful programs, like real-time scanning anti-virus, anti-malware and anti-anything, can really get in the way, keeping a video-editing program from being able to work, unobstructed. When doing video-editing, I turn all of those off, and just do not have an Internet presence, and do not check my e-mails. I only will do that, after the editing session. When I get a new computer, even if custom built for me, the first thing that I do is remove any utilities, etc., that I will not need to run, from the boot loading with MSCONFIG in the Services, and Startup Tabs. I can still run them, when I need them, but do not want them running in the background. Then, before I start the editing session, I turn OFF Norton, StopZilla, and anything else, that is basically protective, but will not be useful, when I am editing. When done, I turn those back on, or just reboot. I want to diminish the CPU cycles, the RAM access, etc., to the minimum, so that most resources are available for my NLE (Non Linear Editor) program.
Thank you for taking the time to offer some great tips and observations. Nancy will benefit from those.
Hunt

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