Why don't you call them and ask them what you can do, IMPORTANT have your install disks and your original serial number handy, so you can show them you do actually own the software. I dont know what you can do but I do know that if you legitimately own the product, they will likely try to help you even if you dont want to buy it again, just extract your files in a format you can use elsewhere. Adobe is a big company but they are real people who also have kids and home movies, etc. Unfortunately Macromedia is no more. They were bought by Adobe who now own their various products.
Many file formats are "containers" which are wrappers around the files, and the files formats are discernable if you open the original files in a (sometimes) hex editor, an editor that can decode the binary parts of text files. Years ago when I worked for a space focused contract as a web developer, it was my job to decipher and translate for web use all sorts of fiile formats. And I did it really well, a lot of it. For a high tech scientific organization that produced a lot of it. The container file may also internally be XML, with the frames as CDATA. Unix shell utilities exist that could extract each frame as a binary file and save them with sequential file names. I used to often use an editor called Oxygen to work with these huge XML files. But one could also use Unix utilities.. one didnt need to use the commercial product. Its just a PITA doing things that way, (but once you start it you will collect scripts to do this and they oftentimes will run very rapidly on a decent machine.
When you save files, always double check that you can extract what you need before you finalize whatever you are doing. There used to be a number of raster image translation utilities that I made extensive use of that were good for this. One was the PBM utilities by Jef Pozanker. (for "raster" files)
On Mac OSX there also used to be a useful program called de-babelizer, that was able to work with a great many saved and compressed file formats.
If you can break your movies down to the original files, we're home free.
Companies deliberately making their own software incompatible because of upgrades really annoyed the government at that time, so the US government demanded and got, whenever they bought proprietary software under contract, they got the source code to it on a separate gold CDROM. So, if it came down to that they could build the old software so that the original file format could be extracted. They eventually developed something called "open source" which makes users iummune from these tricks.
Now the new government we have now, since the mid 1990s has been brainwashed by big corporations to reject the open source concept as a theft of their IP. Its a very contentious issue but the fact is that there is no confusion in the computing community which all understands exactly what issues are at stake. Its the would nbe owners of IP, often developed by others as a gift to the users community under conditions that it would be shared that they try to frame as crooks. But hold on a second here, they did the work. They want their work to either be free to all, or if its owned, its owned by those who wrote it, period. Where I live now, lots of people use all sorts of business software every day and they dont even know that such a thing as free software that legal, or free operating systems, they dont know that such a thing exists, or they have been brainwashed into thinking that is somehow illegal. What a shameless lie.
Its only illegal if its commercial software thats stolen. Thats what the person advocating you try to utilize various cracks or illegal patches wants you to do. Don't do it. Instead, as you do still own the original program, try to use what you have got and get your home movies back.
The open software advocates dont know what weapons are being arrayed against them or why. Its a battle for the future world. Will the future world be one where people can go on living withouit paying extra for every single thing that soime corporation can assert permanent rights to, even water and air, or not?
Lets take water mining. The model which corporations favor is one where whatever they can take, and establish as a norm, they can resell. Even if that leaves the common people with nothing. And then having to buy it - from them.
Lets face it, its a complicated thing, the writing of software. But its a group effort. Groups of people can do it, and do it well. Sometimes they want to share it, not sell it. That is not a crime. No criminality ios at workl there, at all. Its a gift to you.
Its to make it possible for a larger community of users to exist. In the hope that they will contribute their effort into the shared pot and make it better..
Its so those people, rich or poor can help!
Free and open source software is a big thing, which many folk are trying to keep hidden, by various tricks.
They want to monopolize the business of software development making it for the privileged only.
The rich only, basically.
keep those poor people who cant afford huge made up prices for software which is intentionally given away for free by its writers. The foreign staffing companies are a big part of this. They claim that any requirement to use open source steals their "intellectual property" even though it saves communities and users a great deal of money. (So this doesnt make any sense) They dont like that frre software exists and is often used when it does. It may be quite high quality, and the documentation and support for it is free. SOmething like a commercial RDBMS can be insanely expensive.; It is used by the foreign staffing firms not because its good or affordable, its used toi keep all but them out. because its cost is another "costly screen" they find useful - A barrier to entry that keeps competition out of
what they consider to be their turf. They consider the tech jobs to be their half of a deal they made with oligarchs where they get what they want, jobs to broker off, and the other oligarchs get a right to all the ip they want. Even things like off patent drugs, that are essential for public health.
If they had their way there would not be any generic drugs.
So, lets go back to your precious home movies of your family. If you still have the tapes, even if you think you erased over them, why dont you take a look at those tapes and see what exactly is on them today. There may be something you can use. If there are digital files, see if you can open any of them successfully. Then see if a hex editor can see them.
If it could - chances are software exists that could turn compressed files back into uncompressed files. Such as folders of bitmaps.
Back in the day, I got files in that format all the time.
You can work with them using almost any movie program. Using the command line. Once you have a usable file, you can turn almost any movie file you made yourself of your kids or relatives back in the day, back into its underlying bitmaps, save them in a folder and if needed, re-compress them, fast and efficiently. Some of these utilities, although obscure are still around and still can be useful sometimes.
If you can find the original files anywhere, chances are you can extract the underlying images and get your video back. 35 years ago the web was still in its infancy, movies online were still new and oftentimes, people started out with big folders of individual images to make any movie.
No need to try to go around their DRM, if you have the files, you can likely find a way to get your original movie files as they were initially, thats what you will need. They may be in MP2 or some other compressed animation format. Since you own premeire at the level you bought it (and hopefully retain the documentaion proving same) what you need is for it to still work as you bought it.
It may be tied to a specific OS level, say, Windows 98, or similar. You may need to run it on an older machine with the OS you had then. Ask them and make it clear that you are not trying to get anything new for free, just what you already paid for.
Do you still have your original Premiere install disks? They were a bunch of floppies or CD/DVDs, immediately recognizable because Adope Premiere is written on each one of them.
For future reference, you should know that those disks are your proof of ownership. You may also be able to buy a compatible upgrade version used, with a guarantee from the owner that it was usable now, or your money back. Look for used software for sale. Here in the US you can buy and sell your old software, license and all. The IP industry just hates that, if they had their way, you would not be able to transfer ownership or even rent movies. This was a bitter loss for them that they view as a huge injury for them.
They are trying to take over the world. IMHO. Literally. In contrast, Open Source and the open way of working can and does solve a lot of problems we're facing today. One is the lack of qualified teachers. Open source, being free can be a huge help to the creative people who cant or wont spend thousands of dollars p[er application - and then additional money to take classes in school, when a free application might be as good, or sometimes even better. One good example, is the free RDBMS, PostgreSQL. (
https://PostgreSQL.org)
If you understand what an RDBMS is you probably also know how useful they can be.
Yes, you'll be saving thousands of dollars and enabling a huge increase in your business productivity. How do you think businesses like Apple, Amazon, Googloe and Facebook get their start? All four were started because of and using FOSS. If Foss didnt exist, none of them would exist today.
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