Is Premiere Elements 8 junk, or is it just me??

Question

I made many movies (10) using Pinnacle studios over the last 5 years.  While I had various problems none even came close to the frustration I am having with PE 8.0.
I've upgraded my PC to what I believe to be a reasonbably fast machine for moderate home use. 
My specs are
3.3 gigahertz Intel Core i5-2500K
8 GBYTE  Memory
128 GB SSD with all my program files, including PE8
Windows 7
1 TB "user" drive with all my Media
I have been unsucessful at virtually every step of the way when trying to edit my home movies.  The program runs incredibly slow.  I've dug through all of the information on here, and followed every step.
I have a number of small videos loaded from an hd video camera, with a total size of less than 1 Gbyte.  CODEC H264 from a VADO HD  mini cam.
I this CODEC is not supported why doesn't PE8 indicate that?
I've tried moving all the media to the SSD and running the whold program on that drive, but the program crashes every time I try and add media.  (No indication why)
If I run off my user drive, I can eventually get about 10% of the video on the timeline before I run out of memory and the program crashes.
I've tried to render the timeline, and it appears to randomly render some of the clips, but not others ( by virtue of the red bar turning to green).
Then it crashes on an out of memory error.
I increased the swap space, and increased the amount of memory allocated to programs as indicated in one of the forums.
All of my SW is licensed and up to date.
I've got enough hours into this that I should now be an expert user, but I've yet to produce a single thing.  In fact I've yet to edit a single video because I can't even get the media loaded.
Right now It appears I've wasted my $200 and 200 hours of time and should try something different.
Any last minute assistance would be appreciated.

Answer 1

While a bit of an exaggeration, "there is nothing simple about video editing... "
OK, that is not true, BUT video has many inherent complications, such as CODEC's. This ARTICLE will give you some background on them, what they are, how they work, or do not work, and considerations to make, regarding them. As they are the "building blocks" of Video files, knowing the basics, is a great foundation. Where is gets tough, is that camera mfgrs. are constantly adding new ones, or tweaking existing ones. These changes come so quickly, that even a pro editor, is hard-pressed to keep up with them all, how they work, and which NLE (Non Linear Editor) programs, can work with them. To add to that confusion, there are many CODEC's, that are really delivery-only, and are not meant for editing. Some will, but many will not, at least not easily. Also, some NLE programs, like Apple's FCP, use intermediate CODEC's, and many will ONLY work in FCP, or might ONLY be available for Mac's, leaving ALL PC's out of the mix.
With that said, in PrE, or actually most NLE programs, one needs to start with a Project specification that matches the Source Footage, as closely, as is possible. A 100% match, will usually mean few, or no issues in the editing.
Finally, one is then faced with the choices for output, or Export/Share. At that point, there can be many choices, and depending on what one needs to do, maybe a lot of testing also. This ARTICLE will offer some tips there.
As you can see, all of this must be considered, before any real editing begins. The ads make it sound easy, but when just starting out, it is not. However, once one gets their head around the basic concepts, then things get so very, very easy.
When everything was SD, there were few choices, or considerations. Basically, it was "am I in PAL, or NTSC-land? Do I have Standard 4:3, or Widescreen 16:9?" Then it was "do I want to output to DVD, a file to play from a Website, or an AV file delivered in some other way?"
HD eliminated at least one of those questions (Standard 4:3, or Widescreen 16:9), but brought so many other variables into the equation, from "is this Anamorphic footage," to "Is this AVCHD, HDV, MP4/H.264, or something else completely different?" Throw in the variables added by camera mfgrs., and it CAN get confusing. Still, with the concepts nailed down, it DOES get much easier. Trust me on that one.
If one has MOV, or MP4/H.264 footage (note: MOV can hold a lot of different "stuff"), and one only wants plain Cutting/Joining, and then output, I agree with Steve, that QT Pro is a good little program to use. It IS simple (with compatible footage), and will do the Cutting/Joining easily. However, that, plus file conversion, is as far as it goes, regarding editing - simple, but limited by that simplicity.
Good luck, and happy editing,
Hunt