Blur a video for YouTube

How to blur a video before uploading it to YouTube

1. 1

   Open the final edit

   Use the finished video you plan to upload, so each cover lines up with the final cut. On a computer, drop it onto Choose a video to pixelate or blur above; on a phone, tap Choose video.

2. 2

   Cover faces and details

   Under Apply to, pick Chosen areas, and let Find faces automatically cover the people. Add a box for each plate, address or screen, and track the ones that move.

3. 3

   Keep the full resolution

   Open Export settings and check that the summary reads MP4 and Original size, which are the defaults. Then select Export video.

4. 4

   Check it, then upload

   Watch the finished video in the preview, select Download video, and upload that new file in YouTube Studio.

Blur before uploading, or in YouTube Studio?

YouTube Studio has an editor of its own, and blur tools have been part of it, aimed at faces and at areas you pick. Which options it offers, and how they behave, are up to YouTube and can change, so its help pages are the place to check the current details.

Any blur added there is added after the upload. That means the uncovered original has already gone to YouTube before you touch it.

Covering things here first keeps the uncovered footage on your device. You also end up with a censored file you can post elsewhere, and you can inspect every frame on your own screen before anyone else sees it.

A checklist of things to cover

Go through the video once with just this list in mind:

• Faces of people who did not agree to appear, especially children and anyone wandering through the back of a vlog.
• License plates in driving and dashcam clips, which the license plate guide covers in depth.
• House numbers, street signs and the front of your home, which together can reveal where you live.
• Names, email addresses and chats on monitors and phones, as explained in the guide to blurring a screen in a video.
• Parcels, letters, tickets and ID cards with a name or address printed on them.

YouTube has a privacy complaint process for people who find themselves identifiable in a video without having agreed to it. Covering bystanders before you publish makes that far less likely to come up.

Covering faces, plates and personal details

The face finder places an oval on each face it spots and moves it with the person, for as long as they are in the shot. The detector does skip some, mostly small, distant or side-on faces, so watch for anyone left uncovered and add an area over each.

Plates and other details are boxed by hand. Track movement automatically keeps a box on a moving car or on a parcel carried across a room, and Starts here and Ends here limit each box to the seconds it is needed.

For anything that names or locates a person when read, such as a plate or a street address, Black box is the safer effect. A strong blur suits incidental faces in a travel vlog, where solid black shapes would distract from the scene.

Export settings for a YouTube upload

YouTube accepts MP4 files, and MP4 is what you get here unless you switch Format to WebM. The Export settings summary line lists the format, the size and the sound, and it starts out as MP4, Original size and Sound on.

Leave Size on its first option, which matches your video, so a 4K or 1080p clip arrives on YouTube at the resolution you shot it in. YouTube compresses every upload again, and a scaled-down file just gives it less detail to start from.

Quality decides how much data the encoder spends. High uses a higher bitrate and makes a bigger file, which is worth it for footage with lots of fine detail such as foliage, water or crowds.

The blur does nothing to the soundtrack, so a name spoken aloud is still heard. Cutting can be simpler than covering, too: the scissors under the preview remove an unwanted opening or ending before you export.

Check the export before you publish

When the export is done, the new video plays in a preview, with its file name, format, dimensions, length and file size listed below it. If the dimensions differ from your original, that line shows the old size, an arrow and the new one.

• Before exporting, step frame by frame through quick turns and fast cars, where a cover can trail behind its subject.
• Watch the result at full screen, since a blur that seemed strong in a small window can become readable when enlarged.
• Make sure each timed box appears before the thing it hides and stays until it has gone.
• Exports over about 512 MB skip the preview, so download the file and play it on your device instead.

In YouTube Studio, you can upload with the visibility set to Private or Unlisted and watch the processed video before making it public. If you add a custom thumbnail, confirm it does not show what you covered. Automatic captions write out spoken words, so a name said aloud can appear in them.