ScreenGenius Tip: Blur out text
Someone recently asked if it was possible to blur text or blur out parts of the screen in ScreenFlow. This can be useful if your screen recording includes filling out a form that has sensitive information in it.
There’s not a direct way of blurring out text currently in ScreenFlow. (Though I’ve seen this mentioned as a feature request, so perhaps it will show up in a future release.) But I’d like to show one way that I’ve accomplished this. I’m sure there are many ways to do this, and if you have a process you use, please share it here for all to see. But here’s how I do it:
Editor’s note: thanks to SierraX for his video as a response to a question on our forum, which helped crystalize this for me.
26 Responses to “ScreenGenius Tip: Blur out text”
January 6th, 2010 at: 9:38 am
That’s some slick ScreenFlow Ninja-ing Lynn!
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January 6th, 2010 at: 11:46 am
This seems to be a bit if not very clunky, wouldn’t it be easier to just add the support for quartz effects?
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
January 6th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
@MInimum91 can you clarify? are you referring to Quartz composer effects or Quartz Extreme ?
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Minimum91 Reply:
January 6th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
I think I am referring to the Quartz Composer effects. The same type of effects we used to have in iMovie HD Effects menu.
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
January 6th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
@Minimum91: I believe you’re talking about a way to implement this as a feature of ScreenFlow. I’ll certainly pass this on to our developers! Thanks for the input!
January 6th, 2010 at: 1:21 pm
Another solution could be to create a slightly off-white png asset. Then just drag it over the canvas where it’s needed. Resize it to cover the area and make sure the asset stays visible during the duration it’s needed. You can add several of these if necessary.
I suppose a glassy image could be used too.
For some, it could be simpler.
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
January 6th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Great idea, Scott. One could create a semi-transparent (or ghosted) PNG that, when placed over the text, masks much of the details. The beauty of this is that you can use the same png, just resized, over and over again.
I like!
Thanks for the contribution.
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January 6th, 2010 at: 6:35 pm
If Scraster needs to blur something, we usually take a screenshot into Photoshop and use the Gaussian Blur from the Filter menu. Setting it to 3px usually does the trick. We used this extensively in a recent Facebook video we did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B8hxMq0Wvc
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
January 7th, 2010 at 8:41 am
HI Scraster,
Thanks for the suggestion. So you snapped a screenshot, and brought it into Photoshop to add a blur effect. Then, did you just bring that into the timeline in front of your screen recording? I notice you have some nice subtle movements added to the screen recording– so did you have to apply that to the screenshot also to make them move in sync?
Your video is a nice example of using blurred text. Thanks for the input!
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January 11th, 2010 at: 7:08 am
Great ideas here. For the one that requires alignment, we can temporarily reduce the opacity of the blurred clip to effect the alignment quickly and effectively then restore opacity to 100%.
However, I am a little concerned with depriving the audience of a clear example when that might not be necessary. So, why not use an overlay clip with clear, but bogus, data. Passwords are usually replaced with bullets anyway.
The exception on passwords emerges when you screencast the iPhone or iPod touch. Each character is temporarily shown before it becomes a bullet. Thus, one could step through a video an obtain a password.
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 8:13 am
Hi Frank,
Great idea to reduce the opacity temporarily to help align the two clips. I hadn’t thought of doing that – but it’s an easy and effective way to do that.
As for depriving the audience of information that may not need to be kept hidden: true – in this example, it may not be extremely important to hide the username or city fields. (Again, your solution for this is great.) But this is just one example of how to use this. If you see Scraster’s example video (the link is in this comment thread) he demonstrates some functionality of Facebook, and he has his “wall” (i.e. his friends’ personal information) blurred out. That might be a more appropriate or useful application for this.
Thanks for your input, Frank!
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January 11th, 2010 at: 1:00 pm
Great vid, but it is a lot of trouble. It also highlights a feature limitation and a bug that together contribute to making the process in the video less than ideal. The feature limitation is the lack of nudging, making aligning stacked clips a pain. The bug is that currently cropping a clip as shown also distorts the cropped video so it doesn’t match the one it’s sitting on top of anymore.
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Thanks Tom. I wasn’t aware, personally, of the cropping bug. But I see now that it’s being worked on.
And I agree that adding the ability to nudge media in the preview area would very helpful. (especially for those of us who use Photoshop and other programs where that feature is available.)
Thanks for your input.
LYNN
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Tom Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Yea, I’ve reported the cropping bug and the nudge feature request, but it never hurts to reiterate! Nudge would be so easy to implement and lower my blood pressure by several points.
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
:) Yes, we want to promote healthy blood pressure reading among our users!
Tom Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
I thought it was odd when my copy of Screenflow arrived with a complimentary sphygmomanometer, but now I understand!
Lynn Elliott Reply:
January 12th, 2010 at 8:05 am
:) I had to look that one up, Tom!
March 2nd, 2010 at: 3:41 am
Please can you add functionality for Quartz Composer effects
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
March 2nd, 2010 at 7:59 am
HI Jon,
I believe that has been suggested as a feature request.
Thanks,
LYNN
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February 16th, 2011 at: 1:19 pm
This is a really good work-around and thank you for this video, but its still far too tedious to implement. Any word on when Telestream will be offering an easy to use blur feature with Screenflow?
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
February 16th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Hi Steve,
I can’t give you a date, but I can say that it is in the works!
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Tim Leighton-Boyce Reply:
April 20th, 2011 at 10:04 am
I would also welcome a built-in blur feature. I’m starting to use Screenflow to make tutorial videos about Google Analytics, so I need to be able to conceal the confidential information which appears in some of the actual reports.
At the moment this is by far the most tedious part of making the tutorials.
It would also be great to come up with a function for moving the blurred area when the screen being recorded scrolls. At the moment dealing with this is extremely complicated, so some form of vertical animation, or something based on keyframes would transform my working life!
Tim
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Lynn Elliott Reply:
April 20th, 2011 at 10:52 am
Thanks Tim, yes, the blurring is an oft-requested feature. We’ll see what we can do :)
May 7th, 2011 at: 5:34 pm
Thanks for this guide! Unfortunately the maximum blur level was still too legible for my purposes, so I went with the image method instead (not ideal since it covers the cursor, but worked in a pinch). Very helpful.
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June 1st, 2011 at: 3:10 pm
Any updates on the blur feature?
Dan
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June 1st, 2011 at: 3:12 pm
Yes! We will have this as a new feature in the ScreenFlow 3 release (coming soon) See details here: http://www.telestream.net/pdfs/promotions/ScreenFlow_3_Coming_Soon.pdf
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