YouTube just announced a new tool for face-blurring, now part of the Enhancements option in the Video Manager. YouTube is the first online video platform to support this feature. Unfortunately, at least for starters, it’s either an all-or-none proposition, automatically blurring all faces detected. YouTube hints, however, that there may be an option available down the road for selecting individual faces to blur.
This announcement follows closely on the heels of a Pew study showing that more people are getting their news from user-generated video, and this feature is likely targeted toward use cases in journalism. But perhaps there could be use cases in academia as well, and we’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on this.
You can find more information about using this tool on YouTube’s support site: http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=1388381&page=guide.cs&answer=2640535
