Redact Audio and Video Files

Media files uploaded natively to Everlaw do not have a PDF view. You can redact these files from the native view, instead. This allows you to remove sensitive content from the original files upon production.

There are several ways to create redactions on audio or video files, including using redaction buttons or keyboard shortcuts from the redaction panel, or from the transcript. All ways to create audio and video redactions are covered in this article.

To read more about redaction on Everlaw including how to export redaction information, read our articles on Batch Redaction and Redaction.

Create a redaction for an audio or video file

Turn on redaction mode

To turn on redaction mode on an audio or video file:

1. Open the file in the review window.
2. Select the Redact button, press the keyboard shortcut “r,” or select the header of the redaction panel. A redactions panel pops up below the audio or video file. This panel is identical for audio and video files. 

The redactions panel is in three sections.

• The top row contains active buttons, such as Mark start, Mark end, play/pause, and preview settings.
• The middle row contains the redaction editing bar, with entries for Start time, End time, Redaction stamp, and Redaction note. The redaction that you are currently editing or creating will be displayed in this middle row.
• The bottom section of the table contains a list of all redactions already created for this video or audio file. In the example above, no redaction is currently being edited, but two redactions currently exist.

Redact while you watch

1. Play the video up to the moment you want to start a redaction.

   Note

   If you want the redaction to start at the beginning of the file, skip step 2, and only mark an end time (step 3). The redaction will start at the beginning of the file. If you want the redaction to go to the end of the file, do not mark an end time (step 3) for the redaction.

2. When you want to start a redaction, select Mark start in the top row of the redactions panel, or press the keyboard shortcut “,” (comma).
3. At the moment that you want the redaction to end, press Mark end in the redactions panel, or press the keyboard shortcut “.” (period).
4. To finish the redaction, select Redact or press "Enter/Return" on your keyboard. The redaction then appears in the table in the bottom section of the panel, and is added to the list of all existing redactions on this file.Click the play button on any row of this table to play the selected redacted section of the video or audio file.

The video continues to play after you press Mark start and Mark end unless manually paused. The buttons next to Mark start and Mark end are for ease-of-use. The play/pause button plays or pauses the video; and the 1 and 5 buttons advance or rewind the video by 1 and 5 seconds, respectively. 

The selected start and end times  appear in the redaction editing bar in the middle row of the redactions table, as shown below. You can adjust the start and end times in two ways:

• In the editing bar, use the up and down arrows next to the selected times to change the entered times by 0.1 second increments.
  
• From your keyboard, type the start and end time boxes

Finally, you can add a redaction stamp and/or a redaction note.

 Redact from the transcript

You can also view and create redactions from the video or audio transcript. The transcript is displayed next to the video or audio file. Redactions created in the redactions panel automatically appear on the transcript.

1. Ensure that the Transcript button and the Redact button are selected.
2. Click and drag to highlight the transcript text you want to redact. Redactions created in the transcript automatically appear in the redactions panel as well. You can redact multiple words or phrases within a document using Hit Highlights

 

 

Edit and delete audio and video redactions

To edit a redaction:

1. Open the redactions panel
2. Select the pencil next to the redaction you want to edit.
   • Alternatively, you can click on the redaction in the transcript view while in redaction mode.
     
3. The redaction information is removed from the table and appears in the editing bar of the redactions panel.
4. From here, enter changes to the redaction the same way you would when creating a new redaction.
5. To save the changes, select Redact.

There are several ways to delete media redactions:

• To delete a single redaction, select the trash can next to the pencil button of that redaction
• Delete all native redactions from the Annotations panel
• Batch delete redactions from the results table
  

Preview an audio/video redaction

To preview redactions on the file, toggle on preview mode. 

In video files, redacted content is partially obfuscated in the preview, but fully redacted in the production. The redaction may be slightly less precise in the preview than in the production.

The gear  button underneath the preview mode toggle allows you to preview the effect of settings available for production in the production wizard. See the Audio/video redaction settings section of the Productions article for additional details about these settings.