Face Blurring On Video Recordings / Exported Video - What Options Are Available?

I've just seen this in the Hikvision demo truck passing Europe..

All faces/body was blurred automatic when detected. It was in beta but still, it worked. Hikvision sales, asked for input and feedback how we as installers/integraters would like to use this function. Scheduled blurring, or blurring humans and not cars, ect, ect.    

Genetec’s Clearance allows you to redact video - it can now detect faces to speed up the process.

Just talked to  a VMS manufacturer about this issue.  Their research indicated that end users still want unredacted, original video that can be submitted to law enforcement, but do want the ability to export a blurred video clip. The problem they face is that no one seems to want the original recorded video clip to blur details, but would like a simple, quick method of exporting the modified clip.  Isn't there commercially available software that can modify MPEG-4 files?

That was an interesting question and the show ‘Naked and Afraid’ immediately came to mind. 

Some research came up with what they are doing for that show….which is teams of people going frame by frame and blurring what was needed.

For sure if there was a way to automate this task, they would use it.

Perhaps this is a good play for a good GPU processing analytic.

Geutebruck has had their "Motion on Privacy" (MOP) for a couple years now, I think they were one of the first to do it. Sorry I don't have a link to some sort of document but Geutebruck is not very good on providing specific marketing literature. But it will pixelate or blur a detected person my varying degrees you can set. The pixelation can be permanent, or it can be based on User rights levels were certain operators are restricted to the pixelated video and others with more rights can access the unpixelated images.

It started in Europe where of course they have much greater privacy requirements and I think it was because of unions initially. Here in the states it's garnered interest in corrections and it was actually approved by a PREA auditor for sensitive areas like showers.

For post processing  Davinci Resolve is a great free video editor with standard key framing and auto tracking.

Their auto tracking works perfectly for censoring with black bars and pixilation.

Just wondering if anyone had an update on this? we have an urgent requirement for a client requesting exported video face blurring (multiple targets). There several websites out there, but most appear to only blur a single face and seem pretty feeble all round.

This is for FOI and GDPR compliance, so there is a real market here - just a problem finding anything that will do it!

Genetec Clearance looks like it may fit the job - but is it just an online subscription based service that will accept any video import as it appears?

This is really ironic as I would guess 98% of people in any given surveillance clip have posted either a picture or video of themselves online.

Hi Tim,

I'm the Product Marketing Manager for Genetec Clearance. I just wanted to confirm that you can subscribe to Genetec Clearance with your credit card, at the end of your trial. High volume plans require the involvement of a Genetec channel partner, as they play a critical role in ensuring a successful deployment at scale, but for many customers, plans matching their needs can be selected directly from this page https://store.clearance.network.

If you have some time we’d love to give you a live demo with one of our representatives.

Hi Pota,

That's great - many thanks. We're trialing on behalf of a client so hopefully, we can move forward with this as, at first glance, it appears to do exactly what the client requires.

Totally understand the high volume use requiring a channel partner - but clarifying low volume use is open to any subscriber is really useful.

Thanks for coming back with the information.