How to use Boris FX in Premiere Pro — Sapphire, Continuum, Mocha Pro, Silhouette and CrumplePop

Boris FX Suite lists 11 products, but they do not all live in the same place. Going by Boris FX's own host lists, five of them run as plug-ins inside Premiere Pro, one more arrives through Continuum, and the rest work outside Premiere. Adobe's help pages now call the app simply Premiere; Boris FX still says Premiere Pro, and both mean the same program.

The remaining products work outside Premiere. SynthEyes is a standalone camera tracker whose export list, as Boris FX publishes it, names After Effects, Nuke, Blender and other 3D and compositing apps, but not Premiere. Optics plugs into photo software such as Photoshop and Lightroom. Sequoia, Samplitude and Music Studio are standalone audio workstations for Windows only. None of this is a fault with a licence; it is simply where Boris FX designed those tools to run. A plain-language tour of all eleven is in What is Boris FX Suite?

Two more points before you install. First, Sapphire and Continuum each carry a lighter version of Mocha inside their effects, for masks and planar-based parameter tracking, so you can track a mask in Premiere without owning Mocha Pro. Second, Boris FX Suite does not include Premiere itself: you need your own copy, in a version the tools support. If you still need Premiere, our Adobe Creative Cloud page covers that separately.

Boris FX installs, licenses and trials its products through the Boris FX Hub, a free app for macOS and Windows that asks you to sign in with a Boris FX account or to create a free one. For Premiere, the order of the steps matters more than the clicks:

1. Save your project and quit Premiere completely before you install anything.
2. Open the Boris FX Hub and sign in. If you bought from us, use the account and the activation method we confirm on WhatsApp.
3. Choose the products you will use in Premiere. Boris FX's own Sapphire trial steps include choosing your host application before you click Install, so pick your Adobe host when the Hub asks.
4. Let every installation finish, then reopen Premiere. Boris FX's Sapphire documentation says the plug-ins appear in the host's effects list once they are installed and the host has been restarted.
5. For CrumplePop, run the audio scan described further down before you look for it.

One install covers both Adobe video apps. Boris FX documents the Adobe build of Sapphire for After Effects and compatible products such as Premiere Pro, and describes its Continuum AE product as built for both After Effects and Premiere Pro. Mocha Pro's Adobe plug-in likewise launches from both applications.

Check your Premiere version before you rely on a tool for client work. Continuum 2026.5's specifications list Premiere 2024, 2025 and 2026, on Windows 11 and recent macOS versions. Sapphire's specifications page is still titled 2025.5 and lists Premiere up to 2025, so if you run the newest Premiere, check the current host list for Sapphire on borisfx.com before a deadline depends on it.

Installing and licensing are separate steps. How you activate depends on what you received, and trials installed from the same Hub behave differently from a licence, so follow how to activate Boris FX Suite, step by step together with the method we confirm on WhatsApp.

Who is helping you here: ROSH™ Company Labs, an independent brand in Morocco that is not a registered company. It is not affiliated with, authorised by or endorsed by Boris FX or Adobe, it issues no tax invoice, and every purchase is at your own risk. What it does offer is setup help on WhatsApp, with replies within 24 hours for the whole year, to people who bought Boris FX Suite at 999 MAD · 1 Year from it.

Open Window > Effects. Adobe groups the panel into Presets, video, audio and more, with nested bins inside each, and the search field at the top finds any effect by name. Here is where each Boris FX tool lands:

• Sapphire. Under Video Effects, in folders whose names start with Sapphire: Adjust, Blur+Sharpen, Builder, Composite, Distort, Lighting, Render, Stylize and Time. Its transitions are under Video Transitions, in Sapphire Transitions. Every effect name starts with S_, so typing S_Glow or S_LensFlare into the search field is the fastest route.
• Continuum. Under Video Effects, in categories that start with BCC, such as BCC Grads and Tints or BCC Film Style; typing BCC into the search field lists them. Its transitions appear twice: a BCC Transitions folder under Video Transitions, which Boris FX recommends for normal transitions, and an older effect-style set under Video Effects that is kept mainly for compatibility.
• Mocha Pro. Under Video Effects, in the Boris FX Mocha folder, according to Boris FX's own Premiere tutorial.
• Silhouette. Under Video Effects, in the Boris FX Silhouette group.
• CrumplePop. Among the audio effects, but only after Premiere has scanned it; the steps are in the CrumplePop section below.

Two Premiere features make daily work faster. The New Custom Bin button in the Effects panel creates your own bin, and dragging an effect into it adds a copy while the original stays where it was, so a bin holding the ten Boris FX effects you use most saves a lot of scrolling. And if an effect vanishes after a crash, the Effects panel menu has Manage Video Effects, which lists installed effects and lets you enable one again for the next startup.

Apply an effect

1. Select the clip in the timeline. To treat several clips at once, use an adjustment layer instead (File > New > Adjustment Layer): Adobe says an effect on an adjustment layer affects every clip on the tracks below it.
2. Drag the effect from the Effects panel onto the clip or the adjustment layer.
3. Open Effect Controls (Shift + 5) and adjust the parameters. The controls, preset buttons and Mocha buttons of both collections all live in this panel.
4. Play the section back. If the bar above it turns red, render it, as explained under Rendering and export, before you judge the result.

One exception to the adjustment-layer habit: Boris FX notes that in Premiere, Sapphire's Mocha mask generation does not work on adjustment layers, shape layers or text layers. Its documented workaround is to create the mask with the effect on a regular clip, export it from Mocha, and re-import it into the effect on the adjustment layer.

Presets: Sapphire's browser, Continuum's FX Browser and FX Editor

Presets are the quickest way to see what a collection can do on your own footage, and the two collections open them differently.

• Sapphire: every effect has Load Preset and Save Preset buttons near the top of its controls. Load Preset opens a browser with Boris FX's presets and your own, filtered by tags and previewed on your footage. Apply S_Effect from the Sapphire Builder folder if you want to browse all of Sapphire's presets in one place.
• Continuum: classic BCC effects have an FX Browser button in their controls. It previews presets over moving video and applies the one you choose to your clip. The newer BCC+ filters use an FX Editor button instead, which also lets you adjust settings. A standalone FX Browser in the BCC Browser category shows every Continuum preset, but Boris FX says most hosts cannot apply a preset straight from it, so note the preset's name and apply it from the effect itself.

Boris FX lists two Premiere quirks with Sapphire presets. On the first run after installing Sapphire, the preset browser may not close correctly. And when an effect sits on a clip smaller than the sequence, loading a preset can set point parameters in the wrong place; Boris FX says loading the preset a second time sometimes gives the correct result.

Transitions

Adobe's advice applies to every transition: it sits on the cut between two clips, or on one end of a clip, and it needs spare frames beyond the cut, so trim first. Adobe's own tip is to trim at least 15 frames off each clip for a centred one-second transition.

• Sapphire: open Video Transitions > Sapphire Transitions and drag one onto the cut between the two clips. Boris FX's tutorial notes that it needs rendering before it plays smoothly, and its settings appear in Effect Controls once you select it.
• Continuum: use BCC Transitions under Video Transitions. Boris FX recommends these for normal transitions, and says the effect-style versions under Video Effects are mainly there for older projects.
• Your own transition: apply S_Transition from the Sapphire Builder folder across the cut and click Edit Effect. You build the transition in Sapphire Builder, and it returns to Premiere with the parameters you publish.

Sapphire's 2026.5 notes also list one transition issue in Premiere Pro 2025: the second clip of a transition is not always available inside Mocha or the preset browser when you open them from that transition.

Mocha masks inside Sapphire and Continuum

Both collections include a lighter Mocha for masks. In most Sapphire effects, Edit Mocha opens it: draw an X-spline or Bézier shape around the area, track forwards and backwards, then save and exit, because Boris FX warns that unsaved Mocha work is lost. In Continuum, the Pixel Chooser in most filters has a Launch Mocha button; you track there, then close Mocha to return to the timeline. Continuum's option to reuse host masks works in After Effects only, so in Premiere you draw the mask in Mocha.

Premiere also has its own mask tracking in Effect Controls, with Position, Scale and Rotation or a Perspective option, and Adobe lists blurring faces among its uses. For a simple face blur or a mask that follows a clear, high-contrast subject, that may be enough; the Mocha masks earn their place on harder shots. Motion blur, finally, is set per effect in Premiere: Sapphire effects that simulate it have Enable Motion Blur, Shutter Angle, 180 degrees by default, and Samples, where more samples look smoother and take longer to render.

Mocha AE, the lighter Mocha that comes free with After Effects, runs only as an After Effects plug-in. Adobe and Boris FX both say that running Mocha inside Premiere requires the Mocha Pro plug-in. Mocha Pro is one of the products in Boris FX Suite, and Boris FX says its Adobe plug-in lets a Premiere editor use Mocha's shapes and modules without a round trip to After Effects.

1. In the Effects panel, open Video Effects > Boris FX Mocha and drag Mocha Pro onto the clip.
2. In Effect Controls, expand Mocha Pro and click the Mocha button to open the full Mocha interface. There is no project to set up: the clip is already loaded.
3. Draw a shape around a flat area that moves with what you want to follow, such as a screen, a sign or a wall, and track forwards and backwards. Correct any drift before you move on.
4. Close and save. The Mocha project is stored inside the effect, like any other effect setting in Premiere.
5. Back in Effect Controls, decide what Mocha sends to Premiere: a matte, or a module render.

Mattes. View Matte shows the black-and-white matte, Apply Matte cuts the clip with it, Dilate and Feather shape the edge, Invert Mask inverts it, and Visible Layers chooses which tracked layers count.

Module renders. Tick Render and pick a Module: Insert: Composite or Insert: Cutout for screen replacements, Remove for object removal, Stabilize, Stabilize:Unwarp or Stabilize:Warp, Lens: Distort or Lens: Undistort, and Reorient for 360 footage. Boris FX notes that the right layers must already be set up and tracked in Mocha for a render to work.

Screen replacement. Put the new screen image on its own track, pick that track in the effect's Insert Layer menu, then, inside Mocha, set the tracked layer's Insert Clip to Insert Layer.

Removing an object or a person. Boris FX's own Premiere tutorial tracks the object and, separately, a clean area of background, keeps the layer nearest the camera on top, switches Mocha from the Essentials to the Classic workspace to reach the Remove tab, and renders there. Remove is GPU-optimised and, in Boris FX's words, the most memory-intensive module in Mocha Pro, so a capable graphics card and plenty of RAM pay off here.

Masks for Premiere's own effects. Mocha Pro can also hand its shapes to Premiere as native masks: choose Export Shape Data, pick Adobe Premiere shape data and copy it to the clipboard, then select the clip's Opacity, or another effect, in Premiere and paste.

If Mocha Pro asks for a licence, Boris FX's Mocha guide puts the Premiere licence button in the small icon next to the effect title, and recommends restarting the host if licensing misbehaves.

Only have Mocha AE? Adobe's route is to right-click the clips in the timeline and choose Replace With After Effects Composition. Premiere swaps them for a dynamically linked composition, you track with Mocha AE inside After Effects, and the changes appear in Premiere without rendering. For the full list of what Mocha Pro adds over Mocha AE, read Mocha Pro vs the After Effects tracker.

Silhouette is Boris FX's roto, paint and compositing application, and its plug-in, which Boris FX says replaces the older Silhouette Paint plug-in, brings the full toolset into Premiere. The Silhouette 2026 documentation describes the steps:

1. Apply Silhouette to the clip from Video Effects > Boris FX Silhouette.
2. In Effect Controls, click Open under Silhouette Interface.
3. Choose a project type, Roto, Paint, Composite, Primatte, Matte Assist ML or Regrain, and a working depth.
4. Work in Silhouette, then return to Premiere, where the effect's Render setting has already been set to match the project type.

Three details save time. The source alpha is cleared by default so that roto shapes can guide painting; set Source Alpha to Preserve Alpha if you need to keep it. Extra clips can be fed in through the Optional Sources menus. And while the Silhouette project lives inside your Premiere project, the Paint and Stability nodes save sidecar files and ask for a project folder, so keep that folder alongside your Premiere project.

If soft matte edges look thinner in Premiere than they did in Silhouette, Boris FX puts it down to Premiere's Composite in Linear Color setting; turn that option off in Sequence Settings. Silhouette asks for 4 GB of graphics memory or more, and 8 GB for its machine-learning nodes, and its trial is fully functional for 14 days.

CrumplePop's plug-ins, which Boris FX lists for Premiere Pro among other editors, are audio repair tools: AudioDenoise, EchoRemover, WindRemover, TrafficRemover, ClipRemover, PopRemover, RustleRemover, Levelmatic and Voice Enhance. Premiere will not show them until it has scanned them.

1. Open Premiere's Preferences, go to Audio, and open the Audio Plug-in Manager, which Adobe's preferences list as Manage Audio Plug-ins.
2. Press Scan and make sure the CrumplePop plug-ins are enabled.
3. Search for CrumplePop among the audio effects in the Effects panel. Boris FX's older article gives the path Audio Effects > VST3 > Restoration > CrumplePop Complete; its 2026 article simply says to search for CrumplePop.
4. Drag a plug-in, such as Voice Enhance, onto the audio clip. In Effect Controls, click Edit under Custom Setup to open its window, then adjust Strength.

If an audio effect refuses to go onto a clip, check the track: Adobe says audio effects cannot be applied while Show Track Volume or Show Track Keyframes is enabled for that audio track. And play a processed clip all the way through, not just a few seconds: CrumplePop's trial output carries an audio watermark, which Boris FX's activation article describes as a beeping sound that stops once the plug-ins are unlocked.

Be fair to Premiere first. Its Essential Sound panel already has Enhance Speech, an AI tool with a Mix Amount slider, and Repair options that reduce noise, rumble, hum, sibilance and reverb. If those clean the interview, you are done. CrumplePop earns its place on problems they do not name, such as wind, traffic, a rustling lavalier or clipped audio. Boris FX's CrumplePop page also describes a standalone SoundApp that opens video files such as .mp4 and .mov and can split a finished mix into voice, music and effects, which helps when a client sends a video whose music has to go.

Heavy effects slow any editor. Start with what Adobe and Boris FX document, then add the general habits below.

What Adobe and Boris FX document

• Premiere's renderer. In File > Project Settings > General, under Video Rendering and Playback, choose Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration. Adobe says that if the option is greyed out, you should update your graphics driver. It also recommends at least 4 GB of video memory, and 6 GB for 4K.
• Sapphire. GPU acceleration is on by default, through NVIDIA CUDA or AMD HIP on Windows and Metal on macOS, and an effect that cannot use the GPU falls back to the CPU with identical output, only slower. In Premiere you cannot change Sapphire's GPU use while Premiere is running: to force CPU mode, change use_gpu=yes to use_gpu=no in the s_config.text file of the Sapphire Adobe installation, then restart Premiere.
• Continuum. The Preferences button in the BCC banner at the top of each effect opens BCC Preferences, where Enable OpenCL turns GPU processing on or off for the filters that use it. These preferences are not saved in your project, so match them on every computer that renders it. Continuum 2026.5 also unloads unused machine-learning models from the graphics card to free memory.
• Mocha Pro. Mocha tracks on the GPU by default and falls back to the CPU for operations the GPU version does not support. For Remove and Mega Plate, Boris FX says to check that GPU processing is on in the GPU page of Mocha's Preferences.
• Silhouette. 4 GB of graphics memory or more, and 8 GB for machine-learning nodes.

General habits, not vendor instructions

• Lower Playback Resolution in the Program Monitor's settings to 1/2 or 1/4 while you work, and keep Paused Resolution at Full to judge detail, as Adobe suggests.
• Render the heavy section rather than forcing real-time playback: set In and Out points and press Enter.
• Add the heaviest effects late, once the cut is locked, so you are not re-rendering them after every trim.
• For heavy camera files, Premiere can create proxies from the Project panel with Proxy > Create Proxies. Check tracked effects and masks against the full-resolution media before you deliver.
• On a laptop, work on mains power and make sure Premiere uses the dedicated graphics card if the machine has two.
• If playback turns choppy for no clear reason, Adobe's first fix is to delete the media cache files from the Media Cache preferences.

Premiere shows the render state above the timeline: red means unrendered and unlikely to play smoothly, yellow means unrendered but probably fine, green means rendered. Sequence > Render Effects In to Out, or Enter, renders the red sections between your In and Out points; Render In to Out covers the yellow ones as well.

Rendered previews are stored as files, and Premiere can reuse them at export: tick Use Previews in the export settings, and in Media Encoder tick it for each job, because Media Encoder does not use them automatically. That saves time, but it also reuses whatever those previews contain. A section rendered while a Boris FX tool was still on its trial holds the trial output, so after activation choose Sequence > Delete Render Files and render again before you export with previews.

Two quality settings are worth knowing. Adobe says Maximum Render Quality, in Sequence Settings, maximises the quality of motion in rendered previews. Boris FX adds that when you export at a lower resolution than the sequence, Premiere renders effects internally at that lower size, which can change resolution-dependent effects such as BCC Match Grain; enabling Premiere's maximum render quality option makes Premiere render at full resolution first and resize afterwards.

To export, select the sequence and choose File > Export > Media, or press Ctrl + M on Windows and Cmd + M on macOS. Adobe recommends H.264 for most online video, and its Match Source – Adaptive High Bitrate preset follows your sequence's frame size and frame rate. Choose Export to render in Premiere, or Send to Media Encoder to queue the job. Then watch the exported file from start to finish, with the sound on, before it goes to the client.

Match what you see to one of the cases below. If it does not clear, send a screenshot, your operating system and your Premiere version on WhatsApp.

An effect is missing from the Effects panel

• Premiere was open during installation: quit it completely and reopen it.
• The tool was installed for another host: check in the Hub that you installed it for your Adobe host.
• Your Premiere version is newer or older than the tool's host list: compare it with the product's specifications on borisfx.com.
• It was switched off after a crash: open Manage Video Effects from the Effects panel menu, enable it and restart.
• You are looking for Mocha AE: it only exists in After Effects. In Premiere you need Mocha Pro.
• It is CrumplePop: run the scan in the Audio Plug-in Manager and enable the plug-ins.

Red X, black frames, a beep or 10-frame exports

These are the trial and unlicensed signs Boris FX documents, and each points to the product that is not yet licensed on this computer:

• A red X over the picture, and output limited to HD: Sapphire's trial.
• A red X over the picture: Continuum without a licence.
• Black frames: Sapphire, unlicensed after its 30-day trial.
• Watermarked renders and data exports limited to the first 10 frames: Mocha Pro's Learning Edition, which follows its 14-day trial; projects saved in it are encrypted and open only in that mode.
• A beep in the audio: CrumplePop's trial watermark.

Activate the product that shows the sign, restart Premiere, delete the old render files and render again. The steps are in the activation guide; if the sign stays, send us a screenshot.

Other Premiere-specific problems

• A Sapphire Mocha mask is missing on an adjustment, shape or text layer: create it on a regular clip, export it and re-import it, as Boris FX describes.
• Preset points land in the wrong place: load the preset again; Boris FX notes this for effects on clips smaller than the sequence.
• Crashes or very slow renders: force Sapphire onto the CPU through s_config.text, test Continuum with Enable OpenCL switched off, update the graphics driver, and check Premiere's renderer setting.
• Silhouette mattes look thin: turn off Composite in Linear Color in Sequence Settings.
• Mocha Pro asks for a licence: use the small icon next to the effect title, and restart Premiere if licensing still misbehaves.