Blur *all* faces & license plates?

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footofwrath

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Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostFri Sep 17, 2021 9:57 pm

Hi friends,

I generally take long videos driving or walking through areas with other people and/or cars (and then speed them up) - and in 360, so all directions at once. There's no possible way I can track-n-blur 17,000 objects over the course of a 20-min video.

Is it not possible for Resolve to automatically parse across an entire clip and detect a) faces, b) license plates throughout the clip? Those are very common and distinctive objects.. would save years of time to just have an AI that does it...?
Any possibility?
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostFri Sep 17, 2021 10:04 pm

Why would you want to do that? If you're out in a public place, I don't think there's any need to do that legally. I always find blurry things very distracting, but that's personal preference.
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Charles Bennett

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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostFri Sep 17, 2021 10:19 pm

As Sander says, you can legally take video or stills in a public place without the need to blur things. In answer to your question, no Resolve cannot do that.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSat Sep 18, 2021 12:00 am

I'm in Europe, where it's not permitted to publish for public consumption any images/graphics containing personally-identifiable information of other people without their consent: so, faces & license plates are out.

Seems an obvious step for AI. Actually what I want to do with the people is not blur them, but turn them into dinosaurs or teddy bears or standing rock water features. :p There are several incredibly rudimentary filters that do this in Instagram, Sony's silly AR modes, etc etc. So it's not like the technical challenge is hyper-complex or anything.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSat Sep 18, 2021 4:42 am

No, it can't be done. Lower your expectations. Talk to an entertainment attorney (preferably a clearance specialist) and they can go over what you're liable for in footage shot in public but used in a film, TV show, or commercial. Generally, if the people are too far away to be recognized, and if the license tags are in the distance, you'll be fine.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSat Sep 18, 2021 7:12 am

Marc Wielage wrote:No, it can't be done.

In Resolve…

Easiest would probably be some kind of opencv based workflow, you can detect people (their bounding boxes) and use these coords for blurring or overlaying random graphics. For license plates detection there could be either an existing lib or ml model, and if not, there are numerous tutorials on how to train one yourself.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSat Sep 18, 2021 1:00 pm

footofwrath wrote:I'm in Europe, where it's not permitted to publish for public consumption any images/graphics containing personally-identifiable information of other people without their consent: so, faces & license plates are out.

Seems an obvious step for AI. Actually what I want to do with the people is not blur them, but turn them into dinosaurs or teddy bears or standing rock water features. :p There are several incredibly rudimentary filters that do this in Instagram, Sony's silly AR modes, etc etc. So it's not like the technical challenge is hyper-complex or anything.


I am in europe and what you say is not true. You are only not allowed to publish faces if you are a business making profit from the images. Because facial features are now considered personal information, you would have to register and get consent from the people in the footage, just like you would, as a business, be legaly bound to handle personal data a certain way. And even then, news and documentaries are exempt from that. And even a simple vlog monetized on youtube qualifies as "news" or "documentary".

How do you think all those vloggers and vacation-goers in europe, who publish on youtube to share with family, do this? Get a written consent fron every single person that shows up on their footage?

The basic rule still stands, when you are in a public place, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Meaning, if you go out and make yourself visable for other people, how can you expect privacy and not to be filmed...
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSat Sep 18, 2021 2:29 pm

You'll get filmed by video surveillance most of the time anyway…
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSat Sep 18, 2021 8:33 pm

Shoot on a fast lens wide open.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSat Sep 18, 2021 8:53 pm

Wouter Bouwens wrote:
footofwrath wrote:How do you think all those vloggers and vacation-goers in europe, who publish on youtube to share with family, do this? Get a written consent fron every single person that shows up on their footage?

That doesn't mean they are in their rights. Many people had videos pulled of youtube (or TV) because of that.

On top of that, different countries in Europe have different "privacy" type of rules.

The basic rule still stands, when you are in a public place, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Meaning, if you go out and make yourself visable for other people, how can you expect privacy and not to be filmed...
It doesn't work that way in many countries... that are not the USA

If the guy wants to be safer by blurring faces and license plates, that's his choice. He could be lucky for the rest of his life with his videos, or he could get in trouble very quickly. I'm sure you won't be there to defend him if he gets in trouble ;)
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSun Sep 19, 2021 6:55 am

It's called the GDPR, it is a regulation that applies to the entire EEA, and there was a lot of misunderstanding about what it meant, as shown by the OP.

And as the OP is located in the Netherlands, the GDPR, or in Dutch AVG, most certainly applies here.

I do not believe I need to be able to "defend" someone to be allowed to tell them about what a law really means. Or are you suggesting I am not allowed to, unless I am prepared to do so? Does that mean you don't give anyone any advise unless you yourself are able to personally be there and help them?
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSun Sep 19, 2021 8:48 am

footofwrath wrote:Hi friends,

I generally take long videos driving or walking through areas with other people and/or cars (and then speed them up) - and in 360, so all directions at once. There's no possible way I can track-n-blur 17,000 objects over the course of a 20-min video.


since i'm in aus i have no idea about the law in europe, however, it would take quite some effort on the part of a 'concerned' viewer to spot themselves in such a video as described above - and whether any court anywhere would do something about it is another matter entirely.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSun Sep 19, 2021 10:31 am

+1 for Wouter

Do not make a problem out of something when there is no problem to begin with.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostSun Sep 19, 2021 10:19 pm

Wouter Bouwens wrote:It's called the GDPR, it is a regulation that applies to the entire EEA, and there was a lot of misunderstanding about what it meant, as shown by the OP.


I know what the GDPR is, I was working for a payments processing company when it came into force...

What is means is that anyone taking footage in a public area is essentially a 'data controller' wrt to the personal data recorded in it: primarily, faces & number plates.

There is a 'domestic purposes' exemption when the footage is of your home & only of your friends & family. But if you put up a security camera that watches your yard --but also-- has a view on part of the street, then you can't apply the domestic purposes exemption.

Under GDPR terms any public dissemination of personally-identifiable data without the consent of the affected parties is an infringement.

Various statements I found while looking for an actual Dutch legal statement on the matter:


In Germany it is legal to use them, and even courts allow footage as evidence, following a Federal Court case in 2016. It is however illegal to upload dash cam footage to social media unless faces and car number plates have been obscured.



France also restricts dash cams to ‘private use’ – in this case, that means that you can’t upload the footage to the internet.


Other countries where the use of dashcams is unrestricted – as long as the camera does not obstruct the driver’s view and you blur out all faces and registration numbers before publishing the footage – include Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Croatia, Italy, Ireland, Iceland, Lithuania, Latvia, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.


SO I dont think it's entirely accurate to say that "there isn't a problem to begin with".
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostMon Sep 20, 2021 12:24 am

Only in the EU, only in the EU... where bureaucracy has run amok and rules bread like rabbits :-(
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostMon Sep 20, 2021 1:52 am

an OFX that is dead dog sloooowwwwwww in Resolve, but it does offer answers to the orignal question

https://videos.files.wordpress.com/KyeXSenc/brisbane_dvd.mp4
https://kognat.com/

i demo'd it a few years ago. found it reeeeeaaaallllly slow, but it did what the dev said it would do

useful for blurring or gradeing where somewhat in-accurate roto is not deal breaker
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostMon Sep 20, 2021 5:42 am

Hendrik Proosa wrote:Easiest would probably be some kind of opencv based workflow, you can detect people (their bounding boxes) and use these coords for blurring or overlaying random graphics. For license plates detection there could be either an existing lib or ml model, and if not, there are numerous tutorials on how to train one yourself.

Well, you can't do it in After Effects, Nuke, Mocha, Fusion, Premiere, FCPX, Avid, or any other VFX or Editing program I know of... automatically. All of these will allow you do do it manually.

I've worked on dozens of shows where isolated elements -- brand names, background people's faces, license tags, etc. -- had to be selectively blurred. But it wasn't everything. You have to make a value judgement what's worth blurring and what is not. It's a creative call, not an automatic button you can push.

I again say you need to scale down your expectations closer to the reality of 2021. As I sometimes say: You ask a question, I give you an answer, which is just an opinion based on experience. One of the problems with asking for free advice on the internet is that sometimes, the answers you get may not be what you expected or hoped for. But it doesn't make the advice any less true.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostMon Sep 20, 2021 6:47 am

Question was about Resolve, not AE, Nuke or whatnot. If there was an easy way to do it in one of those, someone would have pointed it out. There is an area between push a button and do it manually though, in the reality of 2021, and I gave the best answer I personally know. Do you think some poor bugger in Google is making selective calls about whose face to blur in street view images?
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostMon Sep 20, 2021 5:36 pm

RCModelReviews wrote:Only in the EU, only in the EU... where bureaucracy has run amok and rules bread like rabbits :-(


Other countries as well as the EU. Also on other continents.
Also it is not "the EU" as the rules vary across countries in the EU
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostTue Sep 21, 2021 1:54 pm

For the faces, if you are a Linux user, there is this tool "deface", Video anonymization by face detection, on github: https://github.com/ORB-HD/deface
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostWed Sep 22, 2021 10:39 am

This is not a serious answer to your question, but I found it too cute not to share:

An animation done for Google Japan 'explaining' how all this 'fully automated' blurring works in practice. :lol:

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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostWed Sep 22, 2021 10:51 am

Sander de Regt wrote:This is not a serious answer to your question, but I found it too cute not to share:

An animation done for Google Japan 'explaining' how all this 'fully automated' blurring works in practice. :lol:



+1 I think we need to spread the word that that is actually leaked from their security cameras and is totally real :-)
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostWed Sep 29, 2021 11:05 pm

fabienfeub wrote:For the faces, if you are a Linux user, there is this tool "deface", Video anonymization by face detection, on github: https://github.com/ORB-HD/deface


Cool so now I need to build a whole other PC to parse my videos separately once complete :D But at least the idea is out there heheh...

Hendrik Proosa wrote:Question was about Resolve, not AE, Nuke or whatnot. If there was an easy way to do it in one of those, someone would have pointed it out. There is an area between push a button and do it manually though, in the reality of 2021, and I gave the best answer I personally know. Do you think some poor bugger in Google is making selective calls about whose face to blur in street view images?


Non-selective is exactly what I want. If I cared about certain faces I would take a different tack. How hard can it be to write an algorithm that detects all rectangles greater than 3:1 ratio of uniform colour with contrasting digits/letters inside it.. and the tool could easily let you de-select specific selections if it say blurred a stop sign or letterbox.. if for some reason you needed those. Basically - blur-by-default.

Dermot Shane wrote:an OFX that is dead dog sloooowwwwwww in Resolve, but it does offer answers to the orignal question

https://videos.files.wordpress.com/KyeX ... ne_dvd.mp4
https://kognat.com/

i demo'd it a few years ago. found it reeeeeaaaallllly slow, but it did what the dev said it would do

useful for blurring or gradeing where somewhat in-accurate roto is not deal breaker


I'm at the point where this is not a terrible idea. I can leave it overnight.. no worries. Thanks for the tip. :))
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostFri Dec 23, 2022 1:39 pm

I think it would be awesome to have an option to blur faces(+plates) in all videos by face recognition. As Google blurs out with AI faces and license plates in street view I think all it takes is a team committed to write a new feature for it.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostFri Dec 23, 2022 4:05 pm

There is a separate forum for Feature Requests.

viewforum.php?f=33

Best practice is to search first, to see if someone already asked. If not, post one idea per thread with a very brief description of the idea in the thread's title.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostFri Dec 23, 2022 4:16 pm

Jim Simon wrote:There is a separate forum for Feature Requests.

viewforum.php?f=33

Best practice is to search first, to see if someone already asked. If not, post one idea per thread with a very brief description of the idea in the thread's title.



I searched for something like this and I couldn't find anything.
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Re: Blur *all* faces & license plates?

PostFri Dec 23, 2022 4:18 pm

Good for the search, first.

Next, make a new Request. ;)
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