How to Use YouTube Custom Blurring Tool

YouTube introduced the Custom Blurring Tool in late February 2016. This is an extension of the blurring feature they had launched in 2012. This new feature provides the ability to blur people’s faces or blur sensitive information in your videos uploaded to YouTube.

I think it’s a great feature to have built-in, as part of the YouTube’s video Enhancements tools. This blur feature can be used once the video is uploaded to your channel.

The blur tool is a desktop version and works on static and moving objects. Of course, it’s a bit tricky and potentially time-consuming when working with moving subjects in your video.

When using the Custom Blurring tool, I noticed that it can be a little tricky when blurring moving objects, especially during the beginning of the video. The preview looks grainy and so it’s not always easy to tell if the final edited video will come out right. The video below is a test video I used to test out YouTube’s Custom Blurring Tool. As you can tell, at the beginning of the video, it didn’t completely cover one of the girl’s faces, but overall I think it’s did a pretty good job of blurring the faces in the entire video.

To use the Custom Blurring Tool, find the video in your Video Manager. Then click on the Edit button, and choose Enhancements. Next, in the Blurring Effects tab, you will find two blurring options: automatic, and custom. When you choose the Custom option, you will be able to draw a blur box around the area in the video that you want to blur.

This tool is designed to intuitively analyze what you’re trying to blur as the video plays. Depending on how movement there is, you will need to do some fine-tuning by adjusting the blur boxes as your scrub through the video. You will see the blur annotations in your video timeline. You can accordingly adjust the duration of the blur on the timeline itself. For static objects, you can use the Lock feature in the video timeline.

Once you’re done making the changes, you can save the video as a new video, or override the existing video and publish it on YouTube. In case you don’t want to publish the video life publicly, you can first upload the video as Unlisted and then make it public once you’re completed the changes and are happy with the result. It does take a little while for processing the changes.

For example, a short 19 second video (as shown above) took around 10 minutes to process. 10 minutes may not seem like a long time, but for a 19-second video, it is. But then again, it will depend on how many adjustments have been made. The Custom Blurring Tool is not perfect, but it’s very useful to have in your video editing arsenal.

You can check the video tutorial below on How to Use the YouTube Custom Blurring Tool:

Have you tried YouTube’s Custom Blurring Tool? Feel free to share your thoughts and comments below. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Thanks for stopping by!

CREDITS:
- Canoeing video footage of taken by Anthony Godinho at Port Credit, Ontario, Canada
- Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
- Microsoft, Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks, or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Used with permission from Microsoft.

YouZign 2.0 Review 2016

YouZign is a powerful online graphics tool that I've been personally using for a few months now. This web-based graphics design software makes it easy to create various types of marketing graphics.

In today's world, sharing information via social media has become increasingly popular and shows no signs of stopping. But with so much digital content shared over social media, it's important to make your content stand out from the crowd.

With YouZign you can design high quality and professional-looking graphics for a variety of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest and others.

But that's not all you can do with YouZign. You can design web banners of different sizes, business cards, eBook covers, and infographics. You can even create effective ads for your business or clients, but there is still so much more.

I've used different types of graphics design software and tools in the market over the past few years and I like the simplistic user-interface that YouZign offers. More importantly, I like the commitment of the owner, Bertrand Do, who is constantly listening to users and making improvements to this online graphics design platform. Since its inception, we've seen YouZign evolve and improve tremendously.

You can check the short video below to take a quick look at what the platform looks like. In this YouZign Video Review, I highlight some of the key features you will find in this online graphics platform:

As you saw from the above YouZign Video Review, it's a pretty cool and useful tool to have in your social media creation arsenal.

Another aspect of YouZign that I particularly like is the flexibility to customize pretty much every element on the canvas. You will find contextual menus as you click various elements on the canvas to customize the look and feel of the graphic or image that you're creating.

If you are creative in nature, you can use the "New Template" to create your designs from scratch and build your masterpieces. You can use the hundreds of graphic design elements like graphics, icons, shapes, etc to build your design.

On the other hand, if you need to create a quick graphic design, you can use the hundreds of pre-made templates and customize them the way you want to.

With the integration of websites like Pixabay, Icon Finder, and Stocks Unlimited, you will have access to literally thousands of copyright-free images, graphics and icons directly from YouZign. You essentially choose which site you would like to look for images, and then use the Search Box to find them. Once you've found your image, you can immediately place it onto the canvas and start customizing it based on your needs.

I particularly like the built-in Photo Background Removal tool you will find in YouZign. With this feature, you can remove the background from any image and save it as an image by itself or apply another background. You can check this video tutorial below on how to remove a photo background using this tool:

Once you've successfully completed designing your graphic or image, you can save it into your Designs section within YouZign, or download a copy to your computer.

The one year anniversary of Youzign is on February 8, 2016. On this special occasion, the founder Bertrand is making YouZign available at a discounted price along with several improvements and enhancements to the platform.

This special offer is for a limited time, so if you like what you see, I suggest you pick up a copy as soon as possible. At some point, after this relaunch, the price will be on a monthly basis.

Hope you found this YouZign Review useful. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I will do my best to respond to you.

AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER: If you use the links above to purchase the product. I may earn a commission as a JVZoo affiliate. This recommendation and review is based on my firsthand experience using this product myself.