How to Put a Black Box Over a Face in a Video
Cover faces with Unseen's Black bar method. Learn how to select people, check moving coverage, and distinguish a solid mask from a decorative eye bar.
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Unseen's Black bar method puts a solid treatment over detected face regions. Select it on the import screen, then choose Hide all or Select faces. It is useful when you want obvious redaction and do not want facial detail showing through a soft blur.
The label does not mean you should cover only someone's eyes. A narrow decorative strip can leave most of a face visible. Judge the actual area covered in the result.
Apply a solid treatment to a moving face
- Open Unseen and choose your processing mode.
- Select the video, then choose Black bar.
- Click Select faces if only some people need to be hidden.
- Set the intended face entries to Hide and the others to Keep.
- Choose Continue processing, play the result, and use Export video.
For everyone in the frame, Hide all is the shorter path. Local processing is free; cloud processing requires sign-in and credits.
The app follows detected face regions. To cover a face the detector missed, or to make a box bigger, open Review & fix faces: you can draw a box, drag its edges, and add Padding around a face. It is built for faces, not as a general tool for covering any object.
Why coverage matters more than the color
A solid region removes the original picture detail within its footprint in the exported image. If a cheek or profile sits outside that footprint, however, those pixels remain visible. The rest of the head, clothing, and body also remain.
Imagine a speaker turning to look at a second camera. The useful question is whether the covered region follows the full turn. A perfectly opaque rectangle in the old position does nothing for the newly exposed face.
Check the start and end of the turn, not only the frame where the subject faces forward.
Use different effects for different people
In the face-selection screen, the three-dot menu lets you set a per-face method. You might use Black bar for a guest who wants a clear redaction and Blur for incidental bystanders.
Custom per-face settings remain when you change the default method. If an export contains an unexpected effect, check for an override before rerunning the entire job. Reset that face to the default if you want one consistent treatment.
When a black box is not enough
A box over a face does not mute a name, hide a distinctive tattoo, or remove a reflection that was missed. For a lighthearted social post, those details may not matter; for someone who needs to stay unrecognized, they may matter more than facial texture.
If automatic coverage fails, rerun local processing with a more thorough preset, remove the problem shot, or draw the missing box yourself in Review & fix faces. The missed-frame guide helps identify which remedy fits the problem.
Try it on a short clip
Start with a difficult moment from your video, then inspect the exported result.
Open Unseen