If you know how to blur background or any portion of an already uploaded YouTube video, you’ll be benefited at some point – I can guarantee that. I am going to teach you that and also share my experience regarding this. So you’ll come to know why I think it’s a must to know to blur background of a YouTube video.
Why you would need to blur background or any portion of a YouTube video?
Suppose you uploaded a video on your channel. At a certain instant/portion of this video it shows the face of an individual. When you have acquired thousands of views and hundreds of likes on it, that particular individual may allege to YouTube that he/she appears on that video unwillingly. Basically he doesn’t want to be shown. It doesn’t matter now whether he previously gave you his consent to show his face.
So now you need to get his face off your video. And since you already acquired a SEO standpoint on that video, you can’t simply edit the video in Photoshop and re-upload. Also may be, you can’t possibly delete that particular portion of the video no matter what. So what to do in a situation like this?
Well, luckily for people like you, YouTube has an option to blur background or any portion of an already uploaded video.
You might want to blur a certain portion of a YouTube video on your own
There could be other situations where you might want to blur a certain portion of an uploaded video on your own. You might think that these are the scenes which if shown publicly may raise controversy.
Also may be you didn’t notice previously that a certain portion of an uploaded YouTube video shows ‘copyright belongings’. This might happen if you unscrupulously uploaded someone else’s video. If you’re still determined to keep the video, then you need to blur that particular portion. Remember that we’re not encouraging you to infringe someone’s copyright. All we’re offering is a quick remedy to save your channel from getting strikes. It is best to always use your own content and there’s no alternative to this.
Now learn how to actually blur a portion of a YouTube video
Click on the ‘Edit’ option of the concerned YouTube video while you’re on video manager page of your channel. By default you will be on ‘Info & settings’ tab. You need to click on the ‘Enhancement’ tab. Wait a while and then you’ll see three side by side links in the middle of the screen.
You need to choose the rightmost option: Blurring effects. As you can see from the above image: you can blur not only faces, but also any certain portion of an uploaded YouTube video altogether. First I will teach you the ‘Custom blurring’, as I have used this the most. (This tutorial is on how to blur background youtube)
Custom blurring on a YouTube video
Click on the ‘Edit’ button next to custom blurring option. A new window will open and it will load your video in memory; this loading process might take a while. Go to the certain portion you want to blur by using the (time) slide. When you reach there, choose a portion of the screen by using the mouse. You have to choose the portion diagonally. So you’ll have to guess where to first click and then drag.
Once you have selected a certain frame, the associated bar will begin to process below. When it has processed, you can hit on the ‘lock’ option and thus lock the frame. Offhand, you can move the frame to anywhere else on the screen by dragging and dropping. The length of the bar represents the length of the blur; so you can change it if you need. You can even click and drag the bar to somewhere else, thus blurring another portion instead. If you’re still confused as to what I refer here as bar, you need to take a look at the following image.
This way you can add multiple blurs at multiple places/instances of your YouTube video. You can even delete a certain blur if you think it was wrongfully made. After being done, be sure to hit the ‘Done’ button. Then you may need to hit another confirmation button. Your video will start to process the changes you made. The process will take time depending on the amount of changes you made and the length of the video.
Blur faces – is a process far too easy
If you hit the ‘Blur faces’ option, you will be shown all the faces that appear in the video. You just need to select which faces to blur. I guess you can also select a time duration where all the faces need to be blurred. Frankly, I didn’t try this option yet. So I don’t have much experience. You can try to do it, at least for experimental purpose and then let me know what you found. I really don’t have time to experiment at this moment. So I guess it’s just up to you. (This tutorial is on how to blur background youtube)
My own experiences regarding this topic
Back in September 2016, I had two YouTube channels. One was running successfully and another was struggling to have success. Naturally I was busy uploading and editing videos on the ‘running’ channel. In the meantime, a video of the ‘struggling’ channel contained the image of a lady from my country. I used that as a model’s face. In those days I wasn’t aware of ‘copyright thing’ of images found on Google. So I just used a randomly found image. (This tutorial is on how to blur background youtube)
Well, the lady somehow knew that I had used her image and she (most probably) reported to YouTube regarding this. Then YouTube sent me a mail about this issue and told me to blur her face in my video. But I was just so darn busy with my other channel that I even didn’t notice that mail. As a result, after a certain time, YouTube was left with no other option but simply to remove the video from my channel. I was lucky that I didn’t receive a strike based on that. However YouTube rules and regulations are now far too strict compared to the days in 2016. So be sure to use only copyright free and self created images. And if needed, blur any portion or face in your YouTube video. Stay safe.
Here’s an article depicting how to download copyright free images which I do all the time.
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