How to blur faces in DaVinci Resolve

The blur follows the child's face until they turn behind your arm. Then it follows your arm instead. When their face comes back, the blur is somewhere else.

You don't have to track the whole shot again to fix that. In DaVinci Resolve, you can keep the movement that worked, clear the bad stretch and pick up tracking from a frame where the face is visible again.

First, you need three things: a Power Window, the shape around the face; a blur, which changes the picture inside that shape; and a tracker, which moves it through the shot. The controls below follow the ordinary window tracker in Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve 20 desktop Colorist Guide. You don't need Studio's AI IntelliTrack for this route.

Make the cut before you do the tracking

Cut the video to the shots you intend to share, then look through them for everyone whose face needs covering. Include background children and reflections. Work on one shot at a time; after a cut to another angle, the face can be a different size and in a different place.

Open the Color page and select the clip. Right-click an existing node and choose Add Node → Add Serial, then name the new one “Face cover.” A node is a separate stage of your adjustment. Giving this treatment its own node means you can return to it without searching through your other color changes.

Add a Power Window and track it

Find a frame where you can see the face clearly. It can be in the middle of the shot; the tracker can work backwards as well as forwards from there.

1. Select the Face cover node. Open Window, choose a circle and resize it around the whole face. Leave room around the forehead, chin and cheeks so a slight turn doesn't take them outside it.
2. Open the Blur palette and raise Radius until the facial detail is obscured. Keep the red, green and blue controls linked so all three change together.
3. Open Tracker beside Window. Choose Window tracking with Cloud Tracker, then Track Forward and Reverse.
4. Play through the shot, watching the window as the face moves. Stop at the first place it slips.

These are the blur and tracking controls on printed pages 85 and 87–88 of the Colorist Guide; Cloud Tracker is also shown on page 354. If the opening frame contains only half a face, use a clearer frame later in the shot instead of trying to make the tracker guess from that first view.

Repair the section where the window slips

Suppose the child disappears behind your arm, then comes back on the other side. Keep the good track before that obstruction and repair the part that went wrong:

1. In the Tracker graph, select only the bad tracking data. Choose … → Clear Selected Track Data.
2. Switch the Tracker from Clip to Frame. Clip changes the window across the shot; Frame lets you place corrections at particular moments.
3. Go to the first clear frame after the obstruction and move the window back over the face. Resolve records that position as a keyframe. Choose Track Forward to continue from there.
4. Return to the last visible frame before the obstruction. In Frame mode, correct that position too.
5. Move through the interval between those corrections. If the face appears outside the window, pause there and adjust it. Then play from a little before the obstruction until you're past it.

This is the repair method on printed pages 89–91 of the guide. The two corrected positions give Resolve a path to connect, but a child can duck below that path and come back up. Correct the missed moment too, rather than assuming the two endpoints settle everything in between.

Go back to an earlier frame that was covered before the repair. If the window has changed there as well, check whether you made the adjustment in Clip mode. Use Frame for a change that belongs only at one time.

Give the window more room than you think it needs

Once the window follows the face, look at its edges through the widest turn. A circle fitted around a front view may leave the nose or far cheek outside when the head rotates. Enlarge or reshape it until those features stay inside as well.

Feathering softens the boundary of the treatment. Keep facial features within the fully blurred part, away from that transition. Making a face sit in the soft edge can leave more detail visible there even though the window looks large enough.

Check the closest view at the size of the finished video. A Radius setting that obscures a small background face can leave much more recognizable structure in a close-up. Blur retains information from the original; a solid cover or a crop removes more of it. The method comparison explains that choice.

Check the places where the shot changes

Use these moments to decide where to inspect frame by frame:

For a short stretch that still won't track cleanly, use Frame mode to place more corrections there. You can also cut that stretch from the public version and keep it in the private original.

Open the export outside Resolve

Open the Deliver page and choose H.264 Master in Render Settings. Set File Name and Location, check that the render range is Entire Timeline for your finished edit, then choose Add to Render Queue. Select that job and click Render 1. These are the delivery controls in lesson 10 of the same Colorist Guide.

Open the saved file from that location and play it through. Return to the turns and obstructions you repaired, check the first and last frames, and make sure a freeze frame or chosen thumbnail doesn't reveal a face you've hidden elsewhere.

Listen while you watch. If a name remains in the sound, remove the private words and export again. Then check the location information and select this new file when you post. The blur in your Resolve project won't change an original you've already sent someone.

If someone asks you to send the video, send this rendered file. Export Project Archive in Project Manager bundles the editable project, timelines and media for continuing the work elsewhere, as the Colorist Guide explains on page 5. That archive can contain the uncovered footage. A blur on a node changes the rendered picture; it doesn't replace the source clips sitting in the archive.