Why does Premiere Elements 9 keep crashing during basic editing?

Question

Recently purchased Premiere Elements 9 to do some reasonably simple editing combining videos and photographs. After about 2mins to 10mins of using the software it unexpectedly crashes for no apparent reason. I have only ever had 2 or 3 layers in the video and often when I go to view a preview (but not exclusive to this) it shuts down. Sometimes its when I am manipulating text or trying to add effects. I'm using a brand new iMac and the only other programmes I am running concurrently are Safari and Photoshop although I have tried it with no other programmes running and it still happens. I've added details below of the processor and graphics card I am running to see if there are clues there. I get an error report but its a bit large to paste here although if anyone wants to take a look it would be much appreciated!
  Model Identifier: iMac11,2
  Processor Name: Intel Core i3
  Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz
  Number Of Processors: 1
  Total Number Of Cores: 2
  L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
  L3 Cache: 4 MB
  Memory: 4 GB
Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 5670
  Type: GPU
  Bus: PCIe
  PCIe Lane Width: x16
  VRAM (Total): 512 MB
  Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
  Device ID: 0x68c0
  Revision ID: 0x0000
  ROM Revision: 113-B9850H-133
  EFI Driver Version: 01.00.416
Any help or thoughts would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Thank you for the clarification. Titles should not be an issue at all. You are correct,they are an intrensic part of PrE, and should cause no issues.
I think that Neale's link will be useful. A lot of that material should be X-platform, but you will see some that is Windows-specific, especially as PrE was not X-platform, until PrE 9, and some of the suggestions, while still applicable, were when the program was only on the PC. Also, I gathered up some of it, and have to admit that I am a Mac-illiterate.
Something is definitely wrong with your PrE 9.0, with your system, or with its setup. Steve Grisetti, our MOD here, uses PrE 9.0 on an iMac, that is not a powerhouse computer, and has had few issues. I'd like to hear his comments, as he is X-platform, and many of us are only PC-guys. It's not that we do not want to help, as we do, it's just that many of us do not know the ins-and-outs that might be specific to the Mac.
Now, aspects of performance, such as the nVidia, or ATI video drivers, updating QT and updating PrE are not platform-specific, and are places to look first.
Also, when PrE crashes, do you get any error messages? I can tell you where to look for OS errors and warnings on a PC, but am lost on the Mac. There has to be some process logging function in OSX, like Event Viewer in Windows. It basically logs every call to every service, program, or process, and monitors the response. When things do not go, as they should, a warning, or error message is written to Event Viewer. Some of those are just cryptic code, and meaningless to even a Windows engineer, but some will have real, useful data, and the best will have links to say the MS Web site, or maybe to a driver mfgr. with tips on what went wrong, and best of all, what to do about it. Unfortunately, I cannot even begin to tell you where to look on a Mac.
One other potential concern would be the amount of free space on your HDD's. PrE creates very large working files, and needs a lot of real estate, just to work. How much free space do you have on each of your HDD?
Sorry to just be thinking out loud here, and wish that I had some wonderful, and useful insight.
Good luck,
Hunt