How to use Secure Redact
How-to videos, tutorials, support and more:
Getting started
The simple workflow to Secure Redact
Set up and admin FAQs
The Toolbar features
Track editing
Audio redaction and transcription
Document redaction
Video Search
Enterprise support
FAQs and Contact support
Getting started
Once you have uploaded your video to Secure Redact it will be automatically processed to detect all personally identifiable information (PII) that appear in the footage. These “detections” will be displayed as orange boxes overlaid on the video player, and signify the faces, screens, text and license plates that will be blurred in your final, redacted and downloaded video.
Download our sample video/audio files here to try out all of Secure Redact’s features.
Each redaction box belongs to a track
Redaction box
The orange box over a face, license plate or object that will be redacted, in a single video frame.
Track
A consecutive set of redaction boxes following the same face, license plate or object through the video, ready for redaction.
The simple video workflow for Secure Redact
On login, your Secure Redact account homepage shows all your videos labeled with their current states (ready for review, redacted, downloaded).
Search through any of your videos by filename, and click the Secure Redact logo at any time to get back to this homepage.
Upload a video
Upload your video to get started.
Secure Redact will automatically detect all faces, license plates, screens and scene text, and display the video in the Secure Redact video editor.
All personal data that has been detected will have an orange redaction box over them.
Review the video
Review your video to make sure that all the PII you need to redact has an orange redaction box overlaid in each frame.
Group tracks with Gallery
Gallery simplifies redacting/unredacting individuals by allowing you to easily group all Tracks for the same person into one Timeline row.
Click on the individual’s redaction box and click Gallery from the Toolbar.
Label the Track in the Gallery Panel.
In Suggestions, find the Tracks with your person and drag-and-drop them into the above labeled entity.
Click here to find out more.
Fill in the gaps with Tracker
Easily track new people/objects for redaction with Secure Redact's automated Tracker.
Draw a redaction box over a person/object that doesn't already have one. Then click Tracker.
Secure Redact's intelligent tracking will automatically follow that person/object throughout the entire video.
Click here to find out more.
Unredact a specific individual
All your individual’s corresponding tracks are now in one Timeline row.
To unredact that individual and keep everyone else blurred in the video, simply click the eye icon in the corresponding Timeline row.
Preview the blurred video
To preview what the video will look like before you finish editing, go to the Redact Panel (right) and click Smooth or Pixelated Blur, or Black Box redaction.
Redact and download your video
Finished editing your video?
Click Redact to redact your video, ready for download. This opens the Redact Panel (right), where you can specify your final redaction settings (e.g. blur type, audio redaction and more). Then, click Export.
Once the video has been redacted, you can easily download (or go back to edit) your video.
Set up and admin FAQs
When you upload a file, you can select the following for automated detection:
Video: Choose all Faces (including profiles and backs of heads), License plates, Screens (digital displays including phone screens, TVs, monitors), and environmental Text (such as signs and house numbers).
Audio (audio files or audio in video): Choose Transcript to automatically detect PII—including names, addresses, and dates—while auto-generating a time-coded transcript.
Documents: all PII is automatically detected with the user choosing what to redact in edit mode.
Search: Select Search when uploading a video to take advantage of our Video Search feature.
-
Go to upload a video.
Download one of our sample videos here.
-
You can now view all tracks as orange bars in the timeline, below the video player.
Visit here to understand more about how to navigate the timeline view.
-
Use the controls of the video player to review your video:
Play/pause (SPACE BAR or K)
Go forward/backwards one frame at a time (< / >)
Skip forwards/backwards 5 secs at a time (J / L)
Change the playback speed (O / P)
Mute the video while you edit (M)
Zoom in (and out) of your video and keep it zoomed in whilst you edit.
-
Open the Redact Panel (right of the Video Player) to adjust the Blur settings and preview what the final, redacted video will look like. You can also preview your video in full resolution (if supported).
Toggle Blur Preview using keyboard shortcut ‘B’.
Note: this Redact Panel is also where you can adjust the blur settings before export and download.
-
Visit here to learn all the keyboard shortcuts.
-
There is no need to be concerned about saving your work when navigating back to your homepage (by clicking the Secure Redact logo), or when logging out, because your work autosaves almost immediately after each action you perform.
-
-
Clip or trim videos/audio files before upload
If you’re on the Advanced subscription plan, or you are a Secure Redact Enterprise customer, you can trim videos upon upload (simply click advanced settings).
However, if you are on the Free Trial or Pro subscription plan, this is not possible.
Clip or trim videos/audio files after upload
All users can trim or clip a video or audio file after upload. Only clipped sections will be exported for download when clicking “Export”.
To trim or clip a video or audio file after upload, go to the Redact Panel.
Click the + button next to Clip.
Type in start and end times for clips, or click “Set to current time” to change to the current video or audio frame.
The Toolbar features
-
Remove unwanted tracks or redaction boxes from your video.
Visit here to find out more about Delete.
-
With the Label feature, label a row in the Timeline and start building an entity - full of tracks that correspond to the same individual/object.
You can also pin the labelled row to freeze it at the top of the timeline, to focus on the individual’s tracks more easily.
-
You may need to Split a track if this sounds familiar:
The tracking goes askew in a particular frame.
The tracking has switched to another individual/object.
Visit here for how to use Split.
-
Are there video frames where an individual isn’t tracked? Or need to track a new object for redaction? Secure Redact’s Tracker feature can be applied to intelligently predict tracking forward - automating editing even further.
Visit here for how to use Tracker.
-
A Zone track will redact a fixed area of your video feed for a portion, or the entirety, of your video.
Visit here to know how to use Zone.
-
Need to selectively redact audio in your video?
Visit here to redact audio.
-
The Gallery feature is designed to quickly and easily gather all the tracks associated with one individual and group them together in a Timeline row.
Visit here to know how to use Gallery.
-
Spotlight allows you to inverse the blur - blurring the entire video screen except for what is inside a particular Spotlight box(es).
Visit here to find out how to use Spotlight.
Track editing
Tracks are a string of orange redaction boxes following the same face, license plate, screen or object throughout the video. These are represented by orange bars in the Timeline view.
You can group tracks together to build an entity using our Gallery feature, to ensure that one particular individual is redacted throughout the entirety of the video.
-
Once Secure Redact has automatically tracked PII throughout your video, you’ll be able to edit it.
There are three ways to add new tracking for redaction - either to an existing track or to create an entirely new one.
Tracker = Secure Redact’s automatic tracking technology which you can apply whilst editing, to any individual or object .
Manual Tracker = A manual editing tool within the Secure Redact app that is useful for very precise redaction. Click and hold any orange box whilst playing the video, “dragging” it manually through each video frame to position it exactly where you need to.
Zone = When applied, a Zone tracks a fixed area of the video, redacting that entire area for the duration of the video (or track).
-
To extend a track forward or backward, simply pull the edge of an orange bar (track) in the timeline and extend it. Secure Redact will automatically continue tracking the individual/object in question.
If needed, move and resize the corresponding orange box in the video player, then continue to pull the edge of the orange bar.
This is very useful to "fill in the gaps" between tracks.
-
To trim a track’s length, follow the instructions to Split a track. Then delete the section that is no longer needed.
-
You may need to Split a track if this sounds familiar:
The tracking goes askew in a particular frame.
The tracking has switched to another individual/object.
Visit here for how to use Split.
-
Spotlight allows you to inverse (or toggle) the blur - blurring the entire video screen except for what is inside a particular Spotlight box(es).
Spotlight is useful for very busy and/or overly sensitive scenes, where focus is needed on the main incident areas, whilst anonymising everything in the background.
Visit here to find out how to use Spotlight.
-
Remove unwanted tracks or redaction boxes from your video.
Visit here to find out more about Delete.
-
To "fill in the gaps" between tracks, extend a track forward or backward, simply pull the edge of an orange bar (track) in the timeline and extend it. Secure Redact will automatically continue tracking the individual/object in question.
If needed, move and resize the corresponding orange box in the video player, then continue to pull the edge of the orange bar.
-
Delete a redaction box = the individual will not be redacted in that video frame only.
Delete a track = Once you delete a track you cannot go back, and the track disappears from the video player. To recover the track, you can follow the information on the Tracker feature page.
-
Open the Redact Panel (right of the Video Player) to adjust the Blur settings and preview what the final, redacted video will look like. You can also preview your video in full resolution (if supported).
Toggle Blur Preview using keyboard shortcut ‘B’.
Note: this Redact Panel is also where you can adjust the blur settings before export and download.
Video Search
Use Video Search to locate individuals, artefacts related to people or find specific scenes within a video or across large volumes of video, via natural language queries.
Audio redaction and transcription
Learn how to redact audio in video or from audio files and use our automatically generated transcripts, which are redactable, editable and downloadable.
Document redaction
Upload multi-page PDFs, Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents to Secure Redact to automatically detect PII - then review and selectively redact.
Chain of custody
Automatically generate an audit trail of all activity applied to any video or audio file, for secure processing, redacting, storing, and sharing.
Once the video or audio file has been exported and redacted, simply select Audit log via the Download button. Your exported audit trail will always have a key, which includes the hash and various information regarding the file (e.g. if it has audio, duration, etc).
Anyone with access to the video or audio file can download the audit log, showcasing all the edits and access to the file since its upload to Secure Redact.
Secure Redact Enterprise
-
For all you need to know on the Enterprise Dashboard, visit here.
-
To learn more about how to view, add, edit or delete users in your Secure Redact Account, visit here.
-
To learn more about managing your team’s projects, visit here.
-
Visit How to delete a project.
-
To connect an integration to your Secure Redact Account, visit here.
-
To learn more about your Activity logs, visit here.
-
To become an Enterprise customer and add multiple users to your account, process large amounts of video and other benefits - please contact us to find out more.
-
Go to our APIs page.
-
Visit our CloudConnect page.
-
Your current plan may have a set number of minutes. If you need to add more:
Email your Customer Success Manager with a request to add more minutes to your account.
Once your request has been received, your Customer Success Manager will provide you with instructions on how to proceed.
You will need to manually send out an invoice for the additional minutes. Once payment has been received, inform your customer success manager so they can add the minutes to your account.
For more information about pricing options or any other questions, contact us.
-
If you’re having trouble connecting to the app, or you’re not getting verification/password reset emails from us, check these 4 things:
Are you using Google Chrome? Make sure you are.
Is your browser up to date? Update it to be fully secure.
Have you cleared your cookies and caches?
Is our domain (https://app.secureredact.co.uk for EU/UK users or http://app.secureredact.usfor US users) whitelisted by your IT department?
If you have checked all 4 things and are still having issues, please contact us at support@secureredact.ai.