Youtube Adds Handy Blurring Tool to Video Editor

We all use Youtube. We watch everything from funny cats playing musical instruments to the latest music videos. The problem being is that once it’s uploaded to Youtube you can sometimes quickly find that you’ve left something important in. From your friends license plate, to maybe even your address or phone number on a piece of paper hiding in the corner of the screen. What could you do? For just that scenario Youtube has added a Blurring Tool.

While they previously had a blur tool, it was only really built for people who wanted to hide their faces, but now you can go all out and blur anything you feel might require a little bit of privacy. The cool part of the feature is it’s pretty much automated, all you need to do is draw a box around the part of the video you want to hide and the software will do it all for you. If that’s not what you were after you can just lock the box in place and blur even just a part of the screen.

Understanding that the tool has many uses, Amanda Conway, the privacy lead for this tool, stated that they “built the feature with visual anonymity in mind”. Blocking everything from number plates and faces to phone numbers and bank cards, the new tool could save people time with their post video editing.