Betreff: AI-based Face Blur / Pixelation Workflow in Premiere Pro – Out-of-the-box Feature Request

Yes, I did contact the Boris Team 
12 CET - Your request (61018) has been received and is being reviewed by our support staff.

Sascha,

Just in case you haven't, but ... I'm presuming you've communicated directly with the Boris team? On their site?

Hi Fergus,

as a follow-up: I’ve monitored the export closely and documented the process in detail.

The sequence itself is just 53 seconds long, but as soon as the BCC+ Witness Protection ML effect is applied, the export time explodes from 5 minutes to over an hour — and in many cases leads to a full crash before completion.

Even after optimizing system storage (see screenshot), the issue persists and seems to be tied to memory load or a background process spiraling.

One important observation:
Premiere Pro (or the plugin) should ideally estimate the required memory or processing load before rendering begins— especially when using ML-based effects. A simple warning like “Expected memory usage exceeds X GB” would be extremely helpful to avoid crashing or hanging systems.

Thanks again,
Sascha

Hi Fergus,

Thanks for your reply and your willingness to investigate this.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to share the original media due to privacy concerns – the footage contains identifiable individuals recorded in a public space, and anonymization was the exact reason for using the BCC+ Witness Protection ML effect in the first place.

That said, I’ve documented the issue as precisely as possible and can provide:

# Reproduction Info for BCC+ Witness Protection ML Crash

## Context
Testing BCC+ Witness Protection ML on a real-world project (public urban footage) with the goal of anonymizing visible faces.

## Effect Setup
- Model: Face Detection 1.0
- Blur Amount: 55
- Smooth Motion: 5
- Feather: 3
- All Mosaic & Tint settings: 0
- View: Output

##Project Specs
- Timeline Length: 9:02 min
- Resolution: 3840 × 2160 px (UHD)
- Framerate: 25 fps
- Bitrate target: ~63 Mbps VBR 1-Pass
- Export Format: H.264 via “Match Source – Adaptive High Bitrate”
- Estimated File Size: 4316 MB
- Output via: Hardware acceleration (Metal on macOS)

## System
- iMac Retina 5K, 27", 2020
- Intel Core i7 (8-Core, 3.8 GHz)
- 128 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT 8 GB
- macOS Ventura
- Premiere Pro 25.2.1 (Build 2)
- BCC Continuum: Most recent version (updated)

## Media / Caching
- Source clip on PCIe SSD (TEKQ Veloce, exFAT)
- Media Cache & Database also offloaded to this SSD
- Internal disk 20 GB free space

## Error
- System freezes or Premiere crashes entirely during export between 3–8% progress
- Happens consistently on affected sequence
- Does not occur when BCC effect is removed

## Notes
Due to GDPR/privacy constraints, I’m unable to share the original video files. However, all parameters, timelines and environment are fully documented here.

Best regards,
Sascha

Fore sure. My goal is to eliminate the error and to get a trustful workflow, publishing video content in respect of others privatesphere. But before licensing a tool it should work tustful as well. Still I would expect Adobe to think about offering such features out of the box or as Software as a service, so paid per usage. 

@Sascha Block I moved this post from being a reply to your original request for a face blurring feature into its own post here in the Bugs forum. 

Would you be willing to share with us a project and related media that demonstrate this issue? I cannot duplicate your issue but no doubt my BCC+Witness Protection ML effect settings are different from yours and I'm obviously using a different project & media. 

Regards,

Fergus