A video shows something that should not leave your hands: a face, a screen, a number plate, a document on a desk. RECAST lets you mark the area, say when it applies, and export a copy with that area covered. Because the export is rebuilt frame by frame from pixels, the location, device and timestamps the original container carried do not survive into it.
Drop a video here, or click to choose one
Nothing is uploaded. The clip is read and re-encoded inside this tab.
Drag on the video to mark an area. It applies to the range set below.
Two things to be clear about. First, the covering. "Cover" paints solid over the area, and what was underneath is genuinely gone from the exported file. "Pixelate" keeps a coarse average of what was there, and for small text that is not always safe: an attacker who can guess what the text might say can pixelate their guesses the same way and compare. Cover is the default for that reason. Second, the export. RECAST replays the clip in real time and re-encodes what it draws, so a five minute video takes about five minutes, the result is WebM rather than the format you started with, and re-encoding loses some quality. It does not track anything: a box stays where you put it, so a moving subject needs a box large enough to cover where it goes, or several boxes over different stretches. Check the exported file before you rely on it. Nothing is uploaded at any point.
Questions people ask
How do I blur or black out part of a video?
Define the region, apply it to every frame, and re-encode. The part that matters is that the output must be a new video built from the covered frames. An overlay in a player, a mask in an editing project, or a caption track can all be stripped later, because the original pixels are still sitting in the file.
Is blurring a face in a video safe?
Less safe than in a still, because a video hands an attacker many frames of the same face with the blur falling slightly differently on each. Solid blocks are the safe choice. It is also worth asking what else identifies the person: a voice, a walk, a name spoken aloud, a lanyard, a house number visible in one frame.
Does redacting a video deal with the audio?
Not unless you handle the audio separately. Names, addresses and phone numbers spoken on the track survive any amount of visual redaction, and so does the metadata in the container, which may record the device and the location.