In the summer of 2012, YouTube video hosting users have an additional option to edit uploaded videos. The new service tool allows you to blur the faces of people in the frame. The added option has no settings, and the result of its work depends on the angle at which the face was shot, the quality of the video and the degree of illumination of the frame.
An analogue of the algorithm that allows YouTube's video editor to automatically recognize a face in an image and hide it under a blurred area has already proven itself on Google's "Street View" service, where it is used to prevent identification of license plates and the faces of passers-by in images. The new YouTube editor tool analyzes the uploaded video, recognizes faces in it, tracks their position and hides the detected parts of the video, adding blur, pixelization and noise over them. The official YouTube blog notes that some of the frames can be avoided due to poor video quality, low light, or peculiarities of the shooting angle.
Testing of the new option, the results of which were published on the arstechnica.com website, showed that even in conditions of insufficient lighting and instability of the video, the new tool copes with its task. However, if the camera was not fixed on a tripod during shooting, which made the image shaky, the blur area will cover not only the face, but also part of the figure. With a large number of faces in the frame of such a video, a rather large image area can be blurred. The tool will not work if both eyes are not visible on the face. According to YouTube spokesman Jessica Mason, removing the blur created by the new option is not impossible, but it is quite a challenge.
An option whereby a YouTube user can hide faces in a clip uploaded to a video hosting service is available among the advanced editing functions. It is enough to go to viewing the recordings in the "Video Manager" mode, use the "Improve video" option from the list to the right of the selected video and start the face tracking algorithm by clicking on the "Apply" button in the "Additional functions" list.
