premier pro freezes when starting new project

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installed premier on macbook for first time. new to the program. attempting to start a new project and it gets as far as the first screen then freezes and i have to force quit.

running 10.15.7 on a mid-2014. i7 processor. 16 gigs of ram.

is this machine perhaps too old to run the software? Any suggestions? I tried turning off all other apps and restarting, etc.

thank you!

-mt