Video Redaction Best Practices for High Volumes of Footage Requests

Many companies are experiencing a consistent rise in SARs, and struggle to cope with higher levels of incident footage they need to redact. 

For other organisations, new legislation, such as Martyn’s Law, means having to figure out a response plan for situations where they might need to process multiple SARs – and provide incident footage to third parties on a tight deadline. 

While some teams complete video redaction manually, by blurring out personal data frame by frame in a creative video redaction tool, this approach has multiple drawbacks, from being extremely time-consuming to increasing the risk of data exposure.

We believe that completing high-volume video redaction projects with a quick turnaround, without overstretching company resources, can only be possible with an automated redaction solution, such as Identity Cloak.

Try out Identity Cloak for 7 days for free to see if it’s the right fit for your organisation.

#Best practices to make the most of automated video redaction technology

#Best practice 1: use specialised tools

Manual processes and non-specialist software carry risks of privacy breaches. We recommend switching to automated redaction tools that reduce the risk of skipped frames or data breaches. Depending on industry requirements, some organisations can use cloud solutions, while others would be required to use on-premise software.

#Best practice 2: prevent human error

Staff training around compliant sharing of video footage and consequences of missing deadlines, for example, for responding to SAR requests, can help prevent some of the errors. 

That said, human errors also happen when small teams are required to balance too many tasks and speed through them to get things done. This is another reason to automate video redaction – and make completing video redaction projects as simple as possible.

#Best practice 3: minimise the scope of redaction

Be sure that your team understands that in addition to faces, other types of personally identifying information will also require redaction – for example, car number plates, location indicators, and spoken personal data. To reduce the redaction burden, a video can be trimmed or cropped, as long as it still contains relevant information.

Relying on a video redaction tool that can trim videos and redact both visual and audio personal data in one place can speed up redaction projects and give team members back their time.

#Best practice 4: prepare for real-world scenarios

Ideally, you’re working with footage recorded in clear conditions and don’t need to worry about processing videos recorded in low-light conditions. In reality, it’s likely that at least some of your footage will be less than ideal.

In those cases, you’ll need to make sure that your automated solution can still pick up faces or bodies and reliably redact them.

#Best practice 5: consider the overall cost of a video redaction solutions

When reviewing different video redaction solutions, you’ll want to consider how different types of pricing will affect your budget if the number of footage redaction projects continues to grow.

#Automated video redaction solutions for high-volume video redaction processing

In this section, we’ll present our solution – Identity Cloak – and the ways in which it aligns with video redaction best practices for organisations facing a high volume of video redaction projects.

We’ll also include a short overview of additional automated video redaction solutions that you may want to consider for your organisation.

#Identity Cloak for AI-powered video redaction

Facit’s video redaction solution – Identity Cloak – uses AI to automate detection and tracking for face, bodies, and licence plates. It can be deployed as a desktop solution, as a Milestone XProtect plug-in for livestream and recorded video redaction, as well as via an API.

"I think one of the Identity Cloak advantages is that it is not complicated. Identity Cloak is a very stable system that provides you with a number of useful tools and works in different environments."

— Russell Martin, Head of Customer Care & Sales Projects, TeamSport

“You just upload your video, and Identity Cloak tracks and redacts individuals automatically and accurately. It’s reliable, easy to use and makes the whole process faster.”

— Andy Shorey, Kingston’s IT Director

#Key Identity Cloak features for faster, simpler video redaction

Our team’s goal for the solution is to make video redaction as simple and fast as it can be – which means we’re constantly adding new ways to speed up the process and reduce the amount of time spent redacting videos.

Here’s how Identity Cloak capabilities align with best practices:

Use specialised tools:

Identity Cloak automates detection and tracking for people and vehicles, reducing the need for manual intervention.
It can blur out faces, bodies, specific screen areas, and has a reverse blur mode that can simplify redaction of complex environments.
By default all people are blurred, so team members only need to unblur the subject or subjects of the video – which only takes one click.

Prevent human error:

Identity Cloak can integrate with VMS to prevent file import and export errors, and it can be used for legacy files thanks to the on-screen recorded feature. This way, teams can work with CCTV footage, mobile phone recordings, dashcams, bodycams and so on inside a single platform.
While AI can’t recognize all of the personal data, manual blur can be added with one click, and settings are easy to adjust and don’t require frame-by-frame changes.

Minimise the scope of redaction:

You can combine multiple videos, trim them to only include relevant footage, and crop them to focus on relevant actors or incidents instead of redacting the whole view. At the same time you’ll be able to either mute the audio track if it’s not relevant for the redaction purposes, or remove mentions of personally identifiable information from the audio track.

Prepare for real-world video quality:

Identity Cloak can process low-quality videos, even in low-light conditions, without requiring additional manual work. You can adjust blur size or density depending on the footage. You can also change the frame rate to improve redaction accuracy for videos with fast-moving people or vehicles.

Make video redaction more cost-efficient:

Identity Cloak plans are based on the number of videos processed per year and have no limits on video duration or video file size. We also offer discounts to educational and healthcare organisations.

#Here’s what Identity Cloak customers say about using Identity Cloak:

"It’s so intuitive that all of our staff can use it more or less straight away."

Geoff Shepherd, CCTV Supervisor, Nottingham City Transport

Read the Case Study

“Before Identity Cloak, redacting videos was a tedious and time-consuming process. It has a simple interface, is incredibly easy to use, is flexible and saves me a significant amount of time.”

David Meade, Regional Information Technology Specialist, Chignecto Central Regional Centre for Education

Read the Case Study

“It takes us one or two minutes to retrieve the video and usually about half an hour to process and output a compliant record of events. That’s compared to the hours it used to take to redact video and the resource drain on Wembley Park. Identity Cloak is easy to use.”

Savio Fernandes, Site Security Manager, Wembley Park

Read the Case Study

Read more about Identity Cloak here or explore our Milestone plug-ins for blurring live and recorded video footage.

#Additional video redaction solutions

Below we present a quick overview of other available solutions for video redaction, and their pros and cons.

#CaseGuard: best for redaction across multiple media types 

CaseGuard is a feature-rich, on-premise AI redaction suite covering video, audio, documents, and images in a single platform. It primarily serves law enforcement, government agencies, and healthcare compliance teams.

Pros:

• Bulk redaction and scheduling — automated batch queues and a scheduler allow teams to process large volumes overnight without manual oversight

• On-premise/offline deployment — no internet connection required; data never leaves the organisation's environment, meeting CJIS and other sensitive-data compliance requirements

Cons:

• High cost of entry — one of the most expensive options in the category, potentially prohibitive for smaller teams or teams that only need video redaction

• Steeper learning curve — the breadth of features across media types means meaningful onboarding time is required; CaseGuard recommends dedicated training workshops, unlike simpler tools where staff can self-onboard

#Secure Redact: best for high-volume transcript-based processing

Secure Redact is a browser-based, API-first video and audio redaction SaaS platform primarily serving law enforcement, healthcare, and educational organisations.

Pros:

• Free tier — 10 minutes per month 

• Explicit data residency choice — users can select US (Virginia) or EU (Ireland) processing

• Audio redaction with transcription and automated PII detection — automatically detects names, dates, and places in audio tracks, with selective redaction

Cons:

• Cloud-only — video must leave your network for processing on standard plans

• Usage-based minutes don't roll over — unused monthly minutes are forfeited, which can feel wasteful for teams with irregular, burst-heavy workloads

• API and VMS integration not available on all plans  — teams on lower tiers cannot integrate Secure Redact into existing evidence or VMS workflows without upgrading

Read an in-depth comparison of Secure Redact to other video redaction tools.

#Ocucon: best for low-volume cloud-based redaction 

This is a lightweight, web-based video redaction SaaS, primarily serving retail and hospitality.

Pros:

• Lowest pricing — plans start at £25/month (billed annually)

• Upload-and-go interface — designed for non-technical staff with zero video editing experience

• Flexible minute top-ups — one-off minute blocks of 15, 60, 180, and 540 minutes

Cons:

• No audio redaction — Ocucon cannot redact spoken PII from audio tracks, a significant gap for bodycam footage

• Very low included minutes — even the top tier includes only 30 minutes/month, meaning most real-world workloads will require top-up purchases

• Cloud-only — all footage must be uploaded for processing

Maximum 3 users on published plans — the Enterprise tier caps at 3 user licences, making it unsuitable for larger compliance teams without negotiating a custom

#Related articles

Video redaction: A complete guide

Best video redaction software: what to look for (and a full Identity Cloak walkthrough)

Guide to CCTV Video Redaction and GDPR Compliance