Jordanmoorman84
What computer operating system is your Premiere Elements 12 running on? When you get into a new project, please update 12 to 12.1 via the project's Help Menu/Update.
All may not be lost. Typically the program has the AutoSave feature on. Think about AutoSave as snapshots of your project as various times in its development. The feature works according to the settings in Edit Menu/Preferences/AutoSave.
If you are set for defaults and you have not customized any save locations, assuming Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 64 bit computer, go to
Libraries/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Elements/12.0 and look for the Adobe Premiere Elements AutoSave Folder. Open that folder and try to open
one of the AutoSaves. To do that, right click the AutoSave file, select Open With, and then, from the menu that appears, select Adobe Premiere Elements 12.
After this immediate situation, we need to explore your project to discover why you ran into the problem that you did.
Although you characterize your problem project as a small project, what you wrote suggests otherwise.
I was working on a short project that had many video and audio clips. About 3 hours into the project Premier Elements 12 crashed.
We need to dig into project settings, properties of sources media, edits (including what was going on during those 3 hours), computer
resources, and so on.
Under no conditions move, delete, or rename any of a project's files after that project has been saved closed.
The following is an Adobe document on troubleshooting damaged project. Please review it to see if anything in it helps us
target the cause of your Premiere Elements workflow problems.
Troubleshoot damaged projects | Adobe Premiere Elements
Thank you.
ATR