Premier Elements 4, Freeze or Crashes

Question

I have an HP Pavilion running Windows XP Media Edition, Service Pack 3. 250G HD, 1.24G RAM. Model a1610n. I have  a large project, over 1 1/2 hours. Premier freezes or closes if : I navigate through the program too fast, try to render, or burn a DVD. Sometimes it does not even completely load the project before crashing. I have done other projects successfully both in Elements 3 and 4. The only message I get is that Elements has encountered a problem and must close. Wondering if there is a chance that I need more RAM since when it is working and I am putting a program together it seems slow to react. Also, I still have Elements 3 loaded and wonder if there could be a conflict of some kind even though I am working in 4. Any thoughts would be appreciated....Thx Tom

Answer 1

Tom,
That is a real mixed bag of Assets. Just going down the list, many are totally "delivery formats/CODEC's" that are not meant for editing. That does not mean that they cannot be edited, but they will require some work to get them into a format that can be edited - unfortunately.
The ideal format/CODEC is: DV-AVI Type II (DV-CODEC) with 48KHz 16-bit Audio. PE can do some internal conversions, but this requires major computing power and WILL slow down the editing process, if it can be made to work at all. My suggestion is to find a conversion program, that will do all of this outside of PE. Convert all non DV-AVI Type II formats to DV-AVI Type II, and then Import. JPEG stills, properly sized, will not be a problem.
I use a particular program, DigitalMedia Converter. It is a US$50 shareware program, that works with most properly installed CODEC's, and does "batch conversions" nicely. You load it up, go get some coffee, and when you finish, it has finished. With very few exceptions, it will do everything you need. There are other programs, and some freeware, that will do this too. I just happen to like working with DMC and have found it to be about 99% perfect, so I use that. Others should have recommendations for their favorite converter programs.
Now, the reason that I mentioned G-Spot, is that it does two things, and does them well: it first surveys your system for properly installed CODEC's, and then when you feed a file to it, will tell you a lot of useful info about that file. Part of that info is the CODEC used to create it, what its official name is, and whether you have it on your system. If you do, then PE *might* be able to use it, and a good conversion program *should* be able to use it, to get to DV-AVI Type II. This utility is invaluable if one normally works with more than one format/CODEC Assets. You obviously do, by the list.
As for the computer: more RAM is better. With 4GB you'll be able to use ~3.2GB of that easily for the OS and the programs. If possible, add another HDD (Hard Disk Drive) to your system. Right now, you have about the minimum free space for normal editing. However, with only one HDD, you are asking it to do a lot of work and all at the same exact time. It is being horribly stressed. A second physical (not talking about a "logical" partition here) HDD will improve things greatly, and will allow you to move some of the material off of your C:\ to give it more room to work, and it'll spread the work load over two physical HDD's.
As a closing comment, given the nature of the Assets you describe, I doubt that my workstation could handle editing this material, were it not converted to DV-AVI Type II files, outside of my NLE (Non Linear Editor). This is a machine that easily works with Projects that range up to 30 hours with 16 Video Tracks and 28 Audio Tracks, plus tons of Effects on all Clips. I think that IT would choke! I am not surprised that your computer is having troubles.
To recap:
1.) convert all Video Assets to DV-AVI Type II, prior to Import into PE
2.) add more RAM
3.) add at least one more physical HDD - bigger and faster is better, but your computer's I/O controller will dictate the exact HDD type.
Good luck,
Hunt