Why blurring faces in video is easy to get wrong
Blurring a face in one frame is simple. Blurring it in every frame is where most methods fail. The common tutorial approach is to place a blur shape, then keyframe or motion-track it by hand. It works until the person turns their head, walks behind someone or leaves and re-enters the shot, and a single uncovered frame is enough to show a face.
FrameWipe treats this as a detection problem rather than a drawing problem. It looks for faces on each frame of the clip, so a person who appears for half a second is handled the same way as someone who is on screen the whole time.
Auto blur faces, then check the moments that matter
No face detector is perfect. Small faces in the background, faces in profile and faces partly hidden by a hand or an object are the usual misses. Instead of hiding that, FrameWipe lists the moments where a face may have been missed. You go through the list, look at each frame and draw a box where one is needed.
That review step is the difference between "probably covered" and "checked". It is the part to spend your time on before you publish.
Blur, pixelate or solid fill: which to use
Blur and pixelation look softer and are fine for keeping strangers out of focus in a vlog. They are not always enough for sensitive footage: pixelation and blur can sometimes be partly reversed. For anything where identification would cause harm, such as minors, witnesses or people in sensitive places, use a solid fill.
- Blur: softest look, good for casual footage.
- Pixelate: the classic mosaic look.
- Solid fill: the safest choice for sensitive material.
Blurring faces without uploading the footage
If you need to hide faces, the footage is private by definition: your children at school, a client's office, a street interview. Uploading it to an online blur tool means handing an unblurred copy to someone else first. FrameWipe processes everything on your Mac or Windows PC. There is no account and no upload.
On Mac you can also box any other object, such as a license plate or a name badge, and FrameWipe follows it frame by frame so you can cover it. Object tracking is Mac-only for now.
- Very small, turned-away or partly hidden faces can be missed. Go through the review list before you export.
- The review list points to likely misses; it is not a guarantee that every other frame is correct. Watch the result once.
- Pixelation and blur can sometimes be partly reversed. For sensitive footage, use a solid fill.
- Exporting re-encodes the video, so the output is a new encode of your clip.