Blur Part of a Video
Hide faces, number plates and screens in a video with blur, pixels or a solid box.
Try before you buy.
- Free preview: the first half of the result (up to 10 seconds) at the settings you chose, with a MySmartCoPilot watermark.
- Locked until you unlock it: download and saving to your device.
- Unlock: Pro pass, ₹179 for 30 days or ₹79 for 1 week, a one-time payment that never renews. Unlock: Pro pass, $5.99 for 30 days or $2.99 for 1 week, a one-time payment that never renews.
Ways to unlock shows how to get the full result.
Printing this result is locked in the free preview.
Areas to hide
Drag a box to move it, or a corner to size it. Keyboard: Tab to a box; arrow keys move it (Shift = 10 %), Alt or Option + arrow keys size it.
Areas
No areas yet. Press Add an area, then move and size it over a face, a number plate or a screen.
What will happen
Locked in the free preview. Opens the ways to unlock this result.
Locked in the free preview. Batch runs unlock with a pass.
Locked in the free preview. Query results unlock with a pass.
About the Blur Part of a Video
Hide what should not be seen in a video — a face in the background, a number plate on a dashcam clip, a phone or computer screen, an address on a parcel — with a blur, pixelation or a solid box. Add as many areas as you need, each a rectangle or an ellipse with its own strength and its own time range.
An area can follow something that moves slowly: turn on keyframes, move to another moment and move the box there, and the area glides between the positions you set. You place every area by hand on your own frames; nothing is detected automatically. The picture is drawn again frame by frame in your browser and the sound is copied unchanged. Nothing is uploaded.
Without a pass, the result is a free preview: its first half, up to 10 seconds, with a MySmartCoPilot watermark.
How to use it
- Drop a video on the box or click Choose a video. An area appears in the middle of the picture.
- Move the Position slider to a moment where the face, plate or screen is visible, then drag the box over it and drag its corners to size it. Add an area for each further thing to hide.
- For each area choose Blur, Pixelate or Solid box, its strength and shape, and when it shows (From here / To here). If the thing moves, tick Follow movement with keyframes, then step to other moments and move the box each time.
- Press the run button. With a pass, or after unlocking this result, Download the blurred video. Without a pass the page plays a free preview instead — the first half of the result, up to 10 seconds, with a MySmartCoPilot watermark — and Ways to unlock shows how to get the full file.
Examples
dashcam.mp4 · rectangle, Pixelate, strength 80 · keyframes at 0:02, 0:04 and 0:06 as the car pulls away
dashcam-blurred.mp4 with the plate pixelated while it is in view; the sound copied
interview.mov · ellipse, Blur, strength 70, soft edge · from 0:00 to the end
interview-blurred.mov with the face blurred for the whole video
demo.webm · rectangle, Solid box in black · from 1:12 to 1:20
demo-blurred.webm with the address covered for those eight seconds
Blur, pixelate or a solid box?
- Blur looks the most natural for faces and backgrounds. Its strength is measured against the area itself, so strength 60 hides about as much on a small face as on a large one.
- Pixelate turns the area into large blocks of colour: about 30 blocks along the area’s shorter side at strength 10, down to 3 at full strength.
- Solid box covers the area completely with one colour. Use it for text: a password, an e-mail address, a card or ID number. Pixelated text can sometimes be read back — the open-source Depix project demonstrates a technique that recovers text from pixelized screenshots — and a light blur can leave words readable.
Whichever you choose, the file holds only the changed pixels of that area: the original picture there is not kept anywhere in the result. Soft edge fades blur and pixelation into the surrounding picture over the last quarter of the way from the area’s centre to its edge, so a little of the original shows at the rim; turn it off for a hard edge.
Following something that moves
With Follow movement with keyframes on, each time you move the box at a new moment a keyframe is stored there, and between two keyframes the area moves and grows or shrinks in a straight line. Before the first keyframe and after the last it stays where those keyframes put it. For a face that turns or a car that speeds up, add keyframes closer together; Previous keyframe and Next keyframe jump between them, and Delete this keyframe removes the one at the current moment.
Checking your work
The picture beside the controls shows the frame at the slider’s position with every area applied exactly as it will be in the file. Step through with −1 frame and +1 frame at the moments where something moves fast, and make the area a little larger than the thing it hides: a box that is a few pixels too small lets an edge show.
Limitations
- There is no automatic face, plate or object detection or tracking: you place each area by hand, and fast movement needs keyframes close together.
- Every frame is decoded, changed and encoded again in this browser, so long or 4K videos take a while.
- Needs WebCodecs (current Chrome, Edge, Safari or desktop Firefox) and a decoder for the video’s codec; HEVC needs a hardware decoder in the browser.
- At most 12 areas per video. HDR video is converted to standard dynamic range when it is re-encoded, and subtitle tracks and chapters are not carried over.
Privacy
On this device: nothing is sent
Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.
Frequently asked questions
What do I get without a pass?
Without a pass, Blur Part of a Video shows the first half of the result (up to 10 seconds) at the settings you chose, with a MySmartCoPilot watermark. Until you unlock it, the result can’t be downloaded or saved to your device. A Pro, Premium or Ultimate pass, a one-time payment that never renews, unlocks the full result. The pricing page lists the passes and their prices.
Do I need a pass?
To download or save the whole blurred video, yes: a Pro pass unlocks every Pro tool. Without a pass you see a free preview of your own video: its first half, up to 10 seconds, with your areas applied and a MySmartCoPilot watermark, played on the page. An unlock of this one result (Ways to unlock lists how) makes the whole video from the file still open on the page.
Can the blur be undone?
The original pixels of a blurred, pixelated or covered area are not in the new file, so they cannot simply be switched back on. A weak blur, or pixelation with small blocks, can still leave text guessable, though: for text use the Solid box, and for faces a strength of 50 or more.
Does it find faces by itself?
No. You place each area over what you want to hide; that keeps you in control of exactly what is hidden and when.
Does the sound change?
No. The sound is copied packet for packet. To remove it too, use Mute Video.
Is my video uploaded?
No. The video is read, changed and encoded inside your browser, and the result is saved to your device.
Open-source components
This page can load these open-source components, each only when a task needs it:
- It uses FFmpeg under the LGPLv2.1, through the Mediabunny add-ons: licence and source code.
- It uses the LAME MP3 encoder under the LGPL, through the Mediabunny MP3 add-on: licence and source code.
- It uses Mediabunny under the MPL 2.0: licence and source code.
- It uses the TurboRes ProRes decoder under the MPL 2.0: licence and source code.
You may replace them with your own builds. Their licences and the credits of every library the site uses are on the open-source credits page.