How to change when Secure Redact stops redacting an individual
Secure Redact provides a quick and easy means of redacting personal data from videos - e.g. faces, tattoos, license plates, and vehicles. Whether you’re processing video for a DSAR, reviewing body worn footage, or any other purpose, Secure Redact is a simple way of maintaining data protection compliance.
In a different article, we covered how to change the start point of a track with Secure Redact. This article explains the opposite - how to change the end of a track.
What does “changing the end of a track” mean?
To understand this we must first explain what a track is. A track is a series of orange redaction boxes representing where a face or object will be blurred when the video is downloaded. The orange boxes follow the individual throughout the video up until they go out of frame.
You may find that you need to change when an individual stops being blurred - i.e. when a track ends. This may be before they are out of the video shot, or if they have a different track that begins to redact them in the second part of the video, so you don’t want the two tracks to overlap.
Whatever the reason, there is a quick and easy way to change an existing track to stop blurring someone earlier than expected.
How do you change the end frame of a track?
The Tracks panel on the right shows all your tracks as thumbnails. Double click on the thumbnail of the track you want to edit the end frame of.
That track’s individual track view will open, along with the video player switching to show you the track’s start frame, and the individual’s redaction box in blue (showing you have selected it). Also in the individual track view, you will see the start and end frame numbers of your track - i.e. where the track begins and ends blurring the individual. Next to these numbers will be two arrows - these let you skip forward or back to the corresponding start and end frame numbers.
To change when the track ends, click the arrow next to the end frame number in the individual track view to skip ahead. Then, use the video controls to move the video backwards to the correct frame you want the track to end at. You can use the arrows on your keyboard to go back frame by frame. You’ll see that the individual track view stays on your right, and the selected redaction box stays blue.
NOTE: you cannot go forwards, as like the rest of us - unfortunately Secure Redact cannot go forward in time! To begin a track later than the original track end, you’ll have to add a new track.
Once you are at your chosen end frame for your new track end, right-click on the blue redaction box and select “change track end” from the drop down menu.
In the individual track view, the end frame number will have changed to the current frame that you are in in the video player.
If you have made a mistake or have chosen the wrong frame, you can click the “undo button” if it was the last action you made.
Once that’s done, you should be all good to go!