There's sensitive information in this footage that needs to be redacted before sharing.

Discovery footage often contains sensitive information that needs to be redacted before it goes anywhere: a victim's workplace mentioned in a body cam, a minor's name in a witness interview, a social security number read aloud during a phone call.

Redacting a PDF can be manageable. Redacting audio and video may not be, especially without editing skills, so it usually means handing the file to someone else. That dependency slows you down and leaves sensitive material with a third party.

Here's how to easily redact footage yourself in Reduct before sharing.

Audio redaction: mute sensitive information

Instead of scrubbing through footage frame by frame trying to find where something sensitive comes up, you work from the transcript. Say a jail call transcript shows a caller giving out an address.

Select that line of text, and choose Mute audio from the selection menu. The audio mutes automatically at the exact moment it was spoken.

This works the same way whether you're handling a short clip or an hour of footage. There's no guesswork about where in the file the moment falls. The rest of the recording stays intact.

Video redaction: blur sensitive visuals

Some sensitive material isn't spoken; it's visible. A body cam clip might show a bystander's face, a license plate, or a document with personal information visible on a table.

Select the text that corresponds to the moment you want to blur, then choose Blur video from the selection menu. The selected area is blurred automatically for the exact portion of the video.

This matters most when you're preparing footage for an expert witness or opposing counsel and need to protect someone's identity without altering any other part of the video.

Reels and export: share the redacted clip

Once everything sensitive is handled, you can build a reel from the redacted footage. Multiple clips can be added to the same reel.

Once you’ve finalized the reel, you can download it to your computer.

You can also publish the reel in Reduct and share a private link. The reel won’t be visible to anyone unless they have the link. Anyone with the link can watch it without downloading any files.

Either way, what goes out is already redacted. You're not sending a raw file and hoping someone else remembers to blur or mute the right sections later.

With Reduct, you can protect sensitive information yourself without disrupting the rest of your workflow. You can learn more about secure redaction in Reduct in this blog.