I’ve released Embroidery Reader 2.2.5 to fix the color index out of bounds error. Special thanks to Jean White and Rick Richter for sharing files that were causing the crash! Without those files, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out what was wrong.
The version also checks the PEC format a little closer, and should hopefully provide debug messages when it finds something out of place.
You can download the latest version at the Embroidery Reader page.