Appendix A. Install Premiere Elements 8

When you edit video, you make your computer work hard—really hard. Not only is its processor pushing around tons of information to put a picture on your screen 30 times a second, its hard drives juggle enormous video files, audio files, still images, titles, transitions, and effects. And every time you make an edit, Premiere has to update your project file, which keeps track of all the little pieces.

Fortunately, when it comes to video editing, today’s computers are much more capable than their ancestors. Underpowered netbooks aside, PC manufacturers make the brains behind today’s PCs (the CPU, or central processing unit) with video needs in mind. Hard drives are bigger and faster. Video display cards (sometimes called GPUs, or graphics processing units) do lots of their own processing, taking some of the load off of the CPU. And Premiere takes advantage of all these advances.

This appendix is all about getting Premiere up and running on your computer. You’ll learn what kind of horsepower you need and find tips for making the program run smoothly. In the last part of this appendix are step-by-step instructions for installing Premiere.

Get Ready for Installation

Software publishers list the minimum system requirements for their programs on the package, but they tend to fudge them a little because they want to sell their program to as many customers as possible. Also, different people have different tolerances for the speed at which programs work. ...

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