How to Blur Faces or Moving Objects in Videos Using YouTube Editor Tool

In this article, I am going to show you how you can utilize YouTube’s Custom blurring that enables you to hide part of your video in order to preserve privacy of objects in the video. This feature blurs not only a stationary object but also moving ones. Note that, you need to sign into your YouTube account to use the blur feature of YouTube.

Step 1: Upload Video

If you want to edit a video that is already on YouTube, skip to Step 2

1.1 Once you are signed in, click on the CREATE button and then choose Upload Videos located at the top right of your screen.

1.2 Choose the video that you want to edit and upload. You may drag & drop or browse and upload. Specify age restrictions and click next.

1.3 Make sure that you don’t make the video public, i.e., the default is “Public” and it makes people to see your video before you can blur objects. That is against privacy laws. So, select private or unlisted.

Once you have uploaded your video, you will see it listed in Channel Content.

Step 2: Editing to blur part of the video

2.1 Select the video and click the Details icon (encircled in Red).

2.2 Go to the “Video details” section of the video you wish to edit and click Editor (encircled in Red).

2.3 In the Video Editor page, click the + sign (encircled in Red) to select the blur type.

2.4 Now choose “Face blur” or “Custom blur” depending on what suits the object you want to hide. In this example, I will show you how to hide plate numbers of vehicles (for both stationary and moving vehicles).

2.5 Choose “Custom blur” with will create a preview with a selector that you can move around or resize to fit the area you want to hide. Note that you can specify the duration of the blur by entering start and end time in the “Custom blur”. Also note that the rectangle will move with the blurred object.

2.6 When you are done with blurring the desired object click save. This may take some time. So, you may wait while getting your coffee until it is finished 😊

Step 3: Verify and publish

CHECK! Once the editing is finished, do a final check to make sure that you will not publish a video that violates privacy laws. The final step is to publish your video so people around the world can see it. This is done by changing the visibility from unlisted to public as follows:

3.1 Click Details from the left menu to open “Video details” page

3.2 Select “Public” to change the visibility of your video from unlisted to public and click “Done”.

3.3 Click “Save”.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. If you have questions or comments, please let me know.