Cover a face or a plate on a video

Drag over the part you want to cover and it fills with blocks or a blur, on every frame. The rest of the video is untouched, the sound is kept, and the video never leaves your device — which is the point, for the kind of video you cover things up in.

Drop your video here

or click to browse. The areas you drag stay covered for the whole video. This one re-encodes, so it takes real time. Stays on your device.

You choose the part

Drag over one thing or five: two faces, a plate and a phone number. Everything you do not drag over stays exactly as it was.

Check any moment

The covered area holds still while the video moves. Scrub along the video to make sure the box still covers it later, before you spend the render time.

Nothing is uploaded

The video stays on your device. Cut the Wi-Fi once you have dropped it and it still works.

No signup, no watermark

No account, no trial, no upgrade prompt on the download. Ads pay for the site.

How it works

  1. Drop your video, or click the box to choose a file.
  2. Drag across the part you want to cover. Drag again for another part. Press one to select it, then drag it to move it or a corner handle to change its size.
  3. Slide along the video to check other moments — the areas stay where you drew them, so make sure what you are covering stays inside.
  4. Pick Blocks or Blur, and set the block size if you want one size everywhere. The picture updates as you look at it.
  5. Press Cover and download, wait for the re-encode, and save the MP4.

The area stays put — that is the deal

This tool does not track faces or follow movement. The box you draw covers the same part of the frame from the first second to the last. That is simpler to trust than tracking, which can lose its target for a few frames without telling you — but it means the box has to be big enough to hold whatever you are covering for the whole video. The slider under the picture exists for exactly that check, and it costs nothing: scrubbing changes which frame you are looking at, not the areas.

Blocks or a blur

Blocks keep the shape and the colours of the video, so the result still looks like a video with something covered in it. Each block is the average of what it covers, and the size row under the picture fixes the block size if you want the same weight everywhere — the sizes on offer are read off your own video.

A blur is the gentler look: no hard squares, just a smudge. It is also the softer of the two, because smearing spreads what was there across the neighbouring pixels rather than throwing it away. At the same setting a blur reaches a little further up the letter heights than blocks do, so the note under the size row is on the cautious side for it.

What you get back

An MP4 at the same width and height, with the sound kept. Baking the cover into the frames means re-encoding the whole video — that is why it takes real time, and why the tool says so before you start rather than after. Your device’s own encoder does the work when it can; HDR video and unusual audio go through the slower software engine so their colours and sound are not quietly mangled.

Frequently asked questions

Does the covered area follow a face when it moves?

No. The area you draw stays where you drew it for the whole video — it does not track what is underneath. Use the slider under the picture to check other moments: if the thing you are covering moves out of the box, draw the box bigger so it stays inside. Nothing is covered outside the boxes you draw.

Can the covered part be brought back?

Blocks replace each area with an average, so less is left the bigger the blocks are. A blur only smears it — the original is still spread across those pixels, and smearing is the easier of the two to work backwards from. There is published work on reconstructing pixelated text, and we have not measured it on video, so we will not tell you a mosaic cannot be undone. Draw the box with some margin, and prefer blocks when it matters.

Why does it take so long?

Every frame of the video is redrawn with the cover on it and then encoded again — that is the honest cost of changing the picture. Your device’s own hardware encoder does the work when it can, which is reasonably quick; files it cannot serve (HDR video, unusual sound) go through a slower software engine. A progress bar shows where it is.

Can I cover more than one thing, and undo?

Drag as many areas as you need — two faces, or a plate and a phone number. Undo and Redo sit under the picture, and the keyboard works too: Ctrl+Z to undo and Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y to redo, or ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z on a Mac.

I drew an area slightly off. Can I move it instead of starting again?

Press the area to select it. An outline and four round handles appear: drag anywhere inside it to move it, drag a handle to change its size, and press Remove area — or the Delete key — to take it off. Press an empty part of the picture to let go of it again.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Drag with your finger over the part you want to cover, and the page will not scroll while you are dragging on the picture. The corner handles have a 44 pixel target around them, so you do not have to be precise. Long videos take longer on a phone — keep the page open while it runs.

Is my video uploaded to a server?

No. The work happens on your own device. You can switch your network off after you drop the video and it will still finish. For a video you are covering something up in, that is the whole point.

What do I get back?

An MP4 at the size the video came in, with the sound kept. The video is re-encoded to bake the cover into every frame, at a quality set high enough that the change is not the thing you notice.

Does it add a watermark or need an account?

No watermark, no account, no trial, and no upgrade prompt on the download. The site is free and paid for by ads.

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