Why is my premiere crashing?
In most cases, the broken or outdated graphics driver is the main culprit behind the Premiere Pro crashing issues. If you haven't updated your graphics driver for a long time, or if the graphics driver file is broken or corrupted, you may suffer from the program crashing, stuttering, and even screen flickering issues.
Can you key out white background?
The best way I find to key something on a white or black backdrop is to duplicate the layer, desaturate the top layer (either with hue saturation, or shift channels whichever gives you the best result, The black and white effect in CS5 might work well too). Then use the levels effect to get a high contrast silhouette.