Hello, this is Cristi. Let me show you a quick workaround to creating a regional
blur in Descript. Descript has a blur function on video, but it only blurs the entire video.
And I see this request a lot. If they will add it in the future, that's nice. But until then,
if you insist on doing the blur region in Descript, there is a way around it.
You're not going to like it, but I hope it is useful if you really want to do it this
way. So let's have a look. I have this video in Descript, and let's assume that I want to blur
only the title. Or maybe I want to blur something on my, on my jumper here. It doesn't matter which.
If I click on the video itself, and I go to effects on the right hand side, you have blur.
But watch this, if I apply blur to this video, it blurs the entire
video. I can obviously use the settings to change the radius and all that stuff,
but I don't want to blur the whole thing. I just want to blur that text, for example. So
if I want to do that, let's see how we can do it. Obviously, we can do it in another program.
Importing a blurred PNG, like I've seen some suggestions around the internet,
won't work, because a blurred PNG is basically just a PNG with alpha,
with a little transparency. The blur functionality is not going to work because it's not a dynamic
filter. Let's take the blur off for this moment. Okay. And here's how you do it.
You basically need to use a duplicate of this video. So I'm going to click on the video and
if you don't have a sequence yet, it's very easy to convert this to a sequence by right
clicking on the timeline and selecting detach audio. This will create a sequence and put the
video in it. It will keep all of your edits if you've made edits or cuts or anything like that.
It's just going to detach the audio from the video and put them in a multi track sequence in
place. Okay. Watch this. Detach audio. Nothing changed. Okay. I'm still playing this video.
It's still here, but now I have a sequence and you can see that it's a sequence by you
looking at this indicator in the bottom left corner with those two lines across.
Those are indications of a multi track sequence. And watch this. I can right
click on the sequence and go edit sequence to go inside of that sequence because I
need to do some stuff in there now. Edit sequence. Here we go. And I'm looking at
the sequence in here, and of course, I can see I've got my video and my audio.
Let's call this one, let's rename the track. Let's call this one, uh, you know, I'm going
to delete this. It usually keeps the name video, not blurred. Okay. That's the one. Now,
what I need to do in order to achieve my regional blur is to duplicate or add that video again as a
separate track and therefore as a separate layer that's going to show up in the composition, right?
So I'm going to go to the top right, add media. Here we go. And this is my video, right? Click
on the video and select add new track. This is going to insert that video as a separate track
inside of this same sequence. Add new track, here we go. There it is. That's the second
video there. I need to mute this, by the way, because it brought the audio with it, of course.
So I'm going to click on this track in here and go to the top right and mute track. Here we go. Now,
this is not going to play the audio, just the video. And let's call this one,
I'm just going to rename this one because you'll see why,
video blurred. Okay. So I know which one I'm going to blur. Here we go.
Two videos, the same video. And because they have the same length and everything
like the original video, it should play in sync. Not a problem. Click done here. We're
done here. Okay. So nothing still has changed in my composition right there.
But if I click outside of this video area, Outside of the canvas, look on the sidebar.
I've got script video, not blurred. And I have the other one, which is hidden right now. You
see this little eye icon that's closed, the closed eye. It's a hidden layer. I'm going to
click on it to reveal it. And this is my blurred video layer. Okay. So here
we go. If I hide the main video, just for a second, you see, this is the secondary video.
Okay. So I'm going to fit this to screen. You can fit this to screen by clicking on it. Uh,
clicking it and resizing it from the corners. Or, if you want to just automatically do that,
you can just click on position and say fill canvas. There you go. So my
video is now filling that canvas. So, still nothing happened differently.
Now, let's go and enable those two videos back in here. Okay. And I'm going to,
this is muted, by the way, you see it's muted. So I'm going to click on
this video and I'm going to go to the very beginning and say, okay,
you want to blur this text? Okay. So I'm going to click on this video that is hidden or muted.
Okay. Click on it. And now add the blur effect to it. Okay. So it helps actually, if I hide the
main video, just so that we keep things clean. So I've hidden the main video. It's not going to
move into place or whatever. It's just going to be hidden. And now I've got the second video in here
and I'm going to click on it, this blurred video and go to effects and add the blur effect to it.
Okay. So here we go. The blur effect. Let's turn the intensity of this blur
effect quite high like this. I cannot distinguish the text anymore. That's
the point. Okay. And here we go. So this is my video with the blur. But because I
just want to blur the text on the screen, I can double click to go into crop mode.
You see this grid here shows I'm in crop mode, and now I can pull the sides and just crop
to that particular region of the text right there. Take a look at this. And, by the way,
you can crop, um, you can crop to a rectangle, or you can crop to a circle, or, you know,
that's all. You cannot create a custom crop mask, or a, you know, a crop polygon or something.
Just rectangle and circle. So here we go. This is
my blurred text. I've cropped it now. Okay. Do not resize it, by the way,
because you'll lose position. And now let's go back, click outside in the canvas area,
and let's enable the other video. And because the other video is on top, because you see it,
it's above the other one, I need to click on this main video and move it below the other one.
Right click, layer order, send backward. Here we go. And there you have it. I have blurred a region
with a duplicate video and a crop operation. So now my text is blurred and my video is
playing just fine. Even applies to music and even applies to pictures. Here we go. Now, if you need
to adjust the crop, double click on it and crop it differently like this, you know, adjust your crop.
This is going to play Of course, we need to cover one more thing. At some point,
you may need for this blur to disappear. Okay. So let's suppose that I go down on
my video. And of course I have switched to another screen where I don't need that
blur to be visible anymore, of course. So I'm going to command and mouse wheel to zoom in.
And I will identify the point where I actually switch scenes, right here. So,
in this point, I need to disable this blur. So, all I need to do is just click on the timeline,
press slash, this will insert a new scene, okay? So, inside of the second scene,
I have a choice. Either delete this whole together or just hide this layer, the blur layer.
Okay. So I'm just going to click delete, which you'll, it's going to hide it. It's
not going to delete it. I can bring it back if I want to. So here we go. Scene
number two has my clean video. Scene number one has my blurred video. So if I play now,
like I'm going to demonstrate, I have a video here of me doing it.
It switches to another scene that has that video. Layer hidden. Okay. And of course,
if you want to bring it back, you can go to another portion and say, you know,
I need to blur something else. That's fine. Click in that point, press slash again to
create a new scene. And it's created scene number three. Now click inside of that scene.
And again, show that layer. You see it's retained that blur position,
but let's suppose that now I want to blur the screen area. Not a problem.
Double click. to change the blur region to that point. Do not move it, just change the
crop position to that place. Click done, and here you go. Now my video is blurred.
So now, before that, my video isn't blurred. Let's enter to end,
13 minutes. So I want to add some B roll. As you can see, as we enter that scene,
the video gets blurred, of course. In scenes, you can create transitions. So,
if I want that blur to come in with a fade, okay, I can click on the scene number three here,
and click on the scene on the side, the thumbnail here, and go to transitions,
click plus, and for the in transition, let's do a crossfade, just as an example.
Here we go. So now my fade is going to fade the entire scene,
including the blur effect. Watch this. And, 13 minutes. So I want to add some B roll,
so it fades in as well. So this is how you do it. It's a little bit of a workaround, okay, so
it needs you to duplicate your video and make sure you keep it in position and all that stuff, right?
But, it works. So, hoping that Descript will include an option for us to control
the region for that blur in the future, but until then, this is how you do it. I hope
this helps. Thank you for watching. If you are interested in learning Descript with me,
I provide one on one coaching. See the link in the description.
I also have a membership where you can join and have access to all of my courses,
including a massive Descript course and also Camtasia courses, mini courses,
downloadable assets, and weekly Q& A sessions with me. So, And again,
if you want to join that, that's MediaMakers. club or the link in the description there.
And I hope to see you soon. Thank you again for watching and see you on the next one.