Blur and redact

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Overview

Automatic and manual redaction help you protect sensitive information in videos, audio, and transcripts by blurring, muting, and redacting content where required. This also helps teams move through analysis faster by reducing review and clean-up time. Redactions and blurring will also be applied to relevant highlights in your project and their references within docs across your workspace. If a highlight has already been used elsewhere before redaction is applied, those existing references will need to be updated to display the redacted version. Learn more about updating references →

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Note:

• Once you accept a redaction affecting video or audio, Dovetail renders a redacted version—this is what causes the “still processing” state.
• Editing an existing redaction re-triggers processing.
• Suggested (not-yet-accepted) redactions don’t trigger processing.
• Save as cover is unavailable on a video while it’s still processing.
• You’ll get an in-app notification when processing completes. There is currently no email notification for this.

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Who can redact and restore data

• Manual redaction can be performed and restored by anyone with Full access or Can edit permissions in a project
• Automatic redaction settings can be configured only by workspace admins via ⚙️ Settings → Data redaction → Select your preferred redaction workflow under Automation level

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Automatically redact sensitive data

Admins can enable automatic redaction to detect and apply redactions at scale across projects and channels. Enabling automatic redaction (On or Suggest) does not apply redactions to existing content. Redaction will apply only to videos and transcripts uploaded after the setting is enabled.

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Configuring automatic redaction

1. ⚙️ Settings → Data redaction
2. Choose an automation level:
   • Off: No automatic redaction or suggestions will be applied
   • On: Applied automatically whenever eligible content is processed
   • Suggest: In Projects, Dovetail suggests potential redactions directly in the transcript for review before applying, while Channels are always automatically redacted due to high data volume
3. Optionally edit the instruction prompt to guide how sensitive content is detected, such as specifying terms, identifiers, or data types that should always be masked.
4. Click Save to apply changes.

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Always redact and never redact:

In addition to the instruction prompt, you can maintain explicit lists of terms to always or never redact. These lists give you precise, rule-based control that overrides the AI’s own judgment.

• Always redact: Terms added here are always redacted, even if the AI misses them. These terms are case-sensitive.
• Never redact: Terms added here are never redacted, even if the AI flags them. These terms are case-sensitive.

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Blur and audio/transcript toggles

You can also control what gets redacted beyond just text:

• Blur video: Toggle on to blur the full screen of the redacted video, covering visual details. Toggle off to leave video visuals untouched.
• Redact audio and transcript: Toggle on to mute all audio and hide the transcription text for redacted sections. Toggle off to leave audio and transcript untouched.

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Reviewing grouped suggested redactions

When Suggest mode is enabled, suggested redactions are grouped by term so you can review repeated instances together rather than one by one.

• Use the arrow navigation on each redaction card to move between instances of the same term.
• To accept or reject all instances of a term at once, use the Accept all or Reject all buttons in the sidebar.
• To accept a single instance, click Accept directly from the transcript toolbar.

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Automatic redaction for individual projects or channels

By default, all projects and channels inherit the workspace-level automatic redaction setting. To adjust this for a specific project or channel:

1. Click the ••• menu on the top right corner of a project or channel
2. Select Automation
3. Set Redact sensitive info to On, Suggest, or Off

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Automatically redact Channels data

If redaction is enabled, all data points containing sensitive information within the Channel will be redacted, in accordance with the workspace-level prompt. This is due to the high volume nature of data points within Channels. Redaction will not be applied to back-filled data, and if you change the redaction prompt after importing, it will not update the existing data points. If you wish to remove customers’ email addresses from the data point view, you can unselect email when configuring fields upon import. You can also re-configure your fields at any time by selecting:

1. Sources
2. More actions
3. Configure

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Updating the redaction prompt for existing data

Updating the workspace-level prompt will only apply to new imports. Existing transcripts won’t automatically reprocess with the updated instructions. To apply the new prompt to already imported data:

1. Save your updated prompt in Workspace settings
2. Navigate to the previously imported transcripts
3. Reject all existing suggested redactions
4. Click Suggest to reprocess the transcript using the new prompt

This will generate a fresh set of redaction suggestions based on your updated instructions.

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Manually redact sections of your video and transcript

Users with Full or Can edit access to the project can redact individual sections from videos within notes. This includes blurring, muting all audio, and hiding the text shown in the transcript. Redactions can’t overlap. If you try to redact a range that intersects an existing redaction, you’ll need to edit or remove the existing one first.

• To redact a specific section of a video, highlight a section of text in the transcript and select Redact from the action menu.
• From there, you can choose to redact video, audio, and transcript, or both, from the redaction modal and press Redact.

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The redactions sidebar

The Redactions sidebar is the main place to manage redactions on a note. From here you can:

• View every redaction on the note — timestamp, redacted text, who applied it (AI or a teammate)
• Click a redaction card to jump straight to that point in the transcript
• Edit the blur/audio settings on an existing redaction
• Remove a redaction from just this note, or across the whole project
• Select multiple redactions and remove them in bulk

When redaction actions are disabled:

• The file is still processing
• The project is read-only, or the data is locked
• The transcript is too short (roughly under 50 characters)
• You don’t have permission to remove redactions (see Security settings)

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Blur an entire video

• To blur an entire video:
  1. Click ••• in the top right corner of the video
  2. Select Blur video.
• If you wish to unblur an entire video, click ••• again and press Unblur video.

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Restore redacted data

You can restore video data that has been blurred or muted and redacted text from within a transcript. Any user with Full access or Can edit access to the project can restore redacted data. To restore redacted data:

1. Navigate to the redacted section within the transcript and click on it
2. From there, press Edit redaction from within the action menu
3. From here, use the toggles to restore the redacted data.

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Bulk un-redact data in Projects

You are always in control of the redactions applied to your data. If you applied redactions in error, your privacy requirements have changed, or redactions were applied too broadly, you can remove them at any time across a single data point or an entire project.

1. Open the options menu ••• on any data point in your project.
2. Select Remove redactions.
3. Confirm to apply the changes.

You can also remove redactions across multiple data points at once. In the data tab, select the data points you want to update, then open the options menu ••• and select Remove redactions.

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Workspace-level control over un-redacting

Workspace admins can control who is able to remove redactions from Security settings. This can be restricted to Admins only or left open to Anyone with access. When set to Admins only, no one else in the workspace will be able to remove redactions, regardless of their project role. This gives organizations with strict data governance requirements a way to enforce tighter control over redacted content. If you are unable to remove redactions, check with your workspace admin to confirm the setting in Security settings.

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Troubleshooting redactions

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FAQ

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