Error Importing Premiere Elements project into Premiere Pro CS5

Question

Hi,
I am working on a multi-part video project that I started in Premiere Elements 8.  I put in hours upon hours of editing on the first part and I found that the more I edited, the more often the program would crash (infuriating!).  So I started using Premiere Pro CS5 to produce the second part, resolving to come back to the first part later.  Well, I've come back around to needing this first part done, and it is just undoable in Elements (crashes every 20 seconds!).  I'd like to import that project into CS5 if possible.  The help documentation says this should be perfectly possible... but I'm having no luck.
When I attempt to open my Premiere Elements project in Premiere Pro, it tells me the project must be converted from Elements .prel to Pro .prproj, and I click through the prompts as normal.  But then as soon as it starts trying to open the project, I get this:
"The Project could not be loaded. It may be damaged or contain outdated elements."
I downloaded the Premiere Elements 9 trial to see if it would be less crashy (and it is), but I'd really prefer to have all my video in one program, and CS5 does the best job (and has most of my hours invested).  Elements 9 opens the "damaged" project just fine and I can edit and export normally, so why can't CS5?
Am I stuck recreating the project from the ground up in CS5?

Answer 1

In very general terms, a contemporary PrE Project (PREL), will Open in PrPro, with the steps that you outlined.
Now, there are all sorts of considerations, for aspects that will not likely work:
Instant Movie/Themes, as PrPro cannot read those
Some Effects that PrPro does not have, like the NewBlue FX
Some Transitions that PrPro does not have
Some Title animation Presets, that PrPro does not have
Do you have any of the above in your PrE Project? There are probably other circumstances, but those are all that come immediately to my mind.
The simpler the PrE Project, the greater the likelyhood that it will Convert to a PrPro PRPROJ file.
PrE 8 and PrPro CS5 should be close enough to work, again in those general terms. I can Open simple PrE 4.0 Projects in PrPro 2.0, but cannot Open PrE 7, 8 or 9 Projects in PrPro 2.0.
Good luck,
Hunt