Premiere Elements 15 keeps crashing after I make a cut/cursor through frames

Thanks. I've delivered that particular video now thanks. But will be working in Premiere Elements for another video edit for him later today.

If you go to the program's Edit menu, what is listed on the General page under Project Settings?

for that project the settings were:

Editing mode: HD 1080i (greyed out)

Timebase: 29.97 fps (greyed out)

Video:

Frame size 1920 x 1080 vertical.

Pizel aspect ratio: square pixels (grayed out)

Fields: Upper field first (greyed out)

Sample rate: 48000 Hz.

What is the running time of your video project?

Currently 1 min 48 secs approx. It was a bit longer a previously (2 min 30?) but no more than 3 mins.

When you first add the clips to your timeline, do you see a yellow orange 'render' line above the clips? This is an indication that you do not have the project set up properly to match the video specs, which can result in poor performance and frequent crashes.

I've just tried with a few of the clips. Most of the clips I think show the green line, and most of the sections created by the Instant Movie option show the orange line. Of the 2 additional clips he sent late yesterday, 1 shows the green line and one shows the orange line when placed on the timeline (even though both clips seem to be the same frame rate (30.0 fps), same resolution (1280x720, even though the project is 1920x1080 and the clips he'd previously sent were 1920x1080).

Maybe an issue was the "Instant Movie" option created it in progressive rather than interlaced. If the Instant Movie option hadn't messed up the order of the clips that would probably have worked quite well (apart from the aliasing it sometimes added).

which can result in poor performance and frequent crashes.

Thanks. I'll try to make sure the clips match, but I have to work with what I'm given. Really Premiere Elements shouldn't crash eve even if a clips settings differ from the project settings. Crashing, assuming there's not some other issue with the way things are set up, sounds like there's a bug some where in the software.

Are you really running 128 gigabytes of RAM!? That's quite a load.

Yes,  but After Effects likes a lot of RAM and I use that too (I use that much more often than Premiere Elements).

You don't say, but I'm assuming you're  using the latest version of Windows 10

Yes, Windows just says "Windows 10 Home".

Meantime, if you haven't already, go to the nVidia site and get the latest drivers for your graphics card. Do not trust the drivers provided by Windows.

I'm using the ones from nVidia. I think they're quite recent. I've had quick look on he nvidia site but can't see the driver page for this particular card right now, but the driver is version 388.13.

What model of camcorder is your video coming from and what is the video's format and resolution

I don't know the camcorder (I'm doing the edit for someone else). The files were in quicktime HEVC 1920x1080, 30.000 fps.

I converted them using handbrake to AVC (main @ L4), .m4V, 29.97 fps (just noticed it's different from 30.000 fps).

I then used Premiere Elements' "Instant Movie" option and it's that video and audio track that I've then been editing (clip properties 1920x1080, 29.97 fps, 48000Hz stereo) which sometimes crashed (possibly because of cursoring or cutting). It's been working okay for quite a while now but I don't want it to crash again. I've been using "save as" quite a bit so I have enough backups in case it crashes again.