Enable Face Blur

Learn how to enable the Face Blur feature (live or archive)

Updated over a week ago

When sharing footage outside of your organization, you may be required—or feel obligated—to blur the faces of individuals who are seen in frame. In some cases, this is to protect the privacy of recorded individuals. In other cases, it may be legally required when sharing footage with third parties—such as in the case of Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance.

To make this a seamless experience for Verkada customers—in Command, you can blur all faces on live streams and while archiving footage.

With the Face Blur feature, your organization can share footage externally and still protect their privacy and the privacy of individuals in frame. Footage viewed and stored within Verkada is secure and protected by built-in user-based privacy settings, however, this is not the case for footage that is exported from the Command platform.

Note: The Face Blur feature does not require you to enable any other features (People Analytics). It works completely independently.

Make Face Blur available

  1. Archive your camera footage. Make the Face Blur feature available with these options:

    • You can select whether to make archived footage available across your organization.

    • You can choose to Blur All Faces where archives support the ability to blur faces upon creation.

  2. When you create an archive with the option to Blur All Faces selected, 2 archives are created:

    • Standard archive with no faces blurred

    • Archive of the same time period, but with all faces blurred

Note: With this option, the maximum archive length is 10 minutes. An archive with blurred faces can take up to 1 hour to create.

Face blurring works best when:

  • There are no more than a few people in each frame.

  • There are no objects partially occluding a face, such as a baseball cap. If needed, you can use third-party tools (after the fact) for touch-ups, which should take considerably less time than manually blurring each face in an entire archive.

Enable Live Face Blur

Use the Live Face Blur feature to detect and blur faces when you view your live stream. By default, this feature is turned off and recorded footage will not be blurred.

When you enable the Live Face Blur feature, a filter is automatically applied to faces detected in the frame.

Considerations

  • Only CD22/CD22-E, CD32/CD32-E, CD42/CD42-E, CD52/CD52-E, CD62/CD62-E, CM22, CM42, CB52-E/CB62-E, and CH52-E cameras support this feature.

  • This feature is only available on desktop.

  • This feature is not available for Live Links or Verkada Viewing Station.

  • Live Face Blur does not affect saved footage. Faces are still captured in historical footage and visible in the Motion, History, and People tabs of the camera's page.

  • CB52E and TE and/or CB62E and TE support live face blur when LPR (license plate recognition) mode is disabled.

For questions, contact Verkada Support or your Verkada Sales Representative.

Roles and permissions

Org Admins

From the camera's Settings page, Org Admins can set the default setting of the Live Face Blur feature while allowing users to unblur faces at a moment’s notice in case of an incident. This makes it possible for your organization to conduct live monitoring while protecting the privacy of those on camera, especially in sensitive locations like schools, hospitals, and public spaces.

Users

Each user can also enable or disable it for their live streams at any time so that their regular security workflows are not impeded. Regardless of the setting, users can toggle Live Face Blur, as needed.

How it works

You can access and enable the Live Face Blur feature via the live video feed or a single camera or grid, or through the Camera Settings page.

Live video feed - Camera Page

  1. In Verkada Command, go to All Products > Cameras.

  2. Select a camera to apply the Live Face Blur feature.

  3. To the right of the live video feed or a single camera or grid, click Live Face Blur .

Live video feed - Grids

  1. In Verkada Command, go to All Products > Cameras.

  2. From the left panel, select Grids .

  3. In the bottom right, click Live Face Blur

Settings page

  1. In Verkada Command, go to All Products > Cameras.

  2. From the left panel, click Cameras Settings.

  3. On Cameras Settings, toggle on Default Live Face Blur Setting. ​

Default Live Face Blur Setting sets the default setting for all users and cameras within the organization. If selected 'On', all users will see Live Face Blur turned on by default on their cameras. This setting impacts all users. If needed, each user can later turn it off for their own streams without impacting other users.

Each user's Live Face Blur toggles are specific to each cameras or grids and any changes are persistent for that user in your organization. This means that if you (as a user) toggle off the Live Face Blur for a specific camera, the feature remains off when you access that same camera in the future. Your choice does not affect any other cameras or other users streaming from the same camera.

Create an archive with blurred faces

  1. In Verkada Command, go to All Products > Cameras.

  2. Select the desired camera.

  3. Beneath the live footage, select the Archive tab.

  4. Choose Add Archive.

  5. Select the date and time of the archive.
    Note: The maximum archive length with blurred faces is 10 minutes.

  6. (Optional) Toggle on to share with your organization.

  7. Toggle on Blur Faces.

  8. Choose where you want your timestamp to appear on your archive (top right, top left, bottom right, bottom left).

  9. Click Create Archive.

Related resources


Need more help? Contact Verkada Support

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