When using Secure Redact, there may be circumstances where you need to remove a redaction. For example, if you are fulfilling a DSAR, you may want to remove the redaction track on the face of the person making the request. Alternatively, there may be other faces or information that need to be disclosed for whatever purpose the video is being used for. Regardless of the reason, Secure Redact makes it quick and easy to remove a specific redaction track. 

Quick fire: what is a track?

A track is a consecutive set of redaction boxes that follows the same face (or number plate) throughout the video. It allows you to have consistent redaction of that one individual across multiple frames.

If you need to un-redact an individual or object across different frames (i.e. make an individual visible again), you can remove the corresponding track altogether. This means that not only will the individual be visible in the video for the entirety of that track (i.e. until the individual goes out of frame), but this track will also be removed (effectively deleted) from your tracks panel. 

So, where to start? 

First, you need to find the frame in which the individual you want to un-redact appears. You can do this by finding the corresponding track (which are shown as thumbnails) in the Tracks panel on the right, by using the Tracks panel scrolling arrows and/or page flick through options. Or you can right click on the corresponding orange box in the video player and select “Open track view” from the drop down menu. 

Once you have found it, double click on the track and the individual track view. You will see the individual you want to un-redact in their corresponding start frame, with their redaction box in blue in the video player, showing you have selected that track.

Then, you can remove the track in two ways: 

• Clicking the bin button next to the track’s thumbnail in the individual track view OR

• Right click the blue redaction box on the individual’s face in the video player and select “remove track” from the drop down menu. 

Both these options will remove the redaction box from the individual’s face in the video player and take you back to the full Tracks panel on the right. Since the track no longer exists, there is no corresponding individual track view. 

This also means that the individual will no longer be redacted in the final video. 

Couple of things to remember about this function: 

1. You may need to remove multiple tracks for the same individual if you want to un-blur them for the entirety of the video. This is only the case if they go in and out of frame, as new tracks are created when they re-enter the video frame. 

2. This functionality is irreversible. The only way to get that track back is to click the UNDO button. This will only work if removing the track was the last action you performed - if not, you will have to re-add a new track.

Once you have removed the redaction track, the face or object in question will not be blurred in the final redacted video. 

Watch the full how-to video below!