This brief guide will provide instructions on how to anonymize your research recordings. This feature available for Project Owners, editors and collaborators applies to Live Interviews and Off-Platform Research.
Discuss allows Researchers to enable anonymization for:
Anonymizing the Recording After the Completed Interview
Forgot to set your anonymization settings for your project and now your recordings and Off-Platform Research are not blurred?
- Login to your Discuss account and select your desired project
- From the project overview tab, click the settings icon
- Select the Blur Interview Recordings option
- Now head to the 'Insights' tab, and click the 'Recordings' tab.
- Choose the past Interview Recordings or Off-Platform Research you would like to anonymize from the left-hand panel
- Click on Tools and Downloads on the top right of the tab
- Click on Blur this recordings and clips
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Click 'Confirm' in acknowledgment that once that interview is blurred, it cannot be undone.
NOTE: If the recording is long, It takes a few minutes to generate the blurred recording. You can give it a few minutes refresh your recordings page and play the recording again.
TOP TIP: Make sure to unclick the 'Anonymize Recordings' setting if you do not need recordings outside of the ones you needed to go back and anonymized. Leaving the setting on will ensure all future recordings will be anonymized in real-time and cannot be undone.
Stimuli will be blurred. However, Whiteboard snapshots will not be blurred in the recording.
Blur Only the Participant Stream
Discuss allows anonymization by way of blurring recordings. This is to ensure the privacy of the participant within the session and, in Germany, is required for GDPR compliance.
In project setup, researchers can choose to blur the entire recording or blur the participant stream only. This can also be changed later on in the project settings. Blurring the participant stream only means that any stimuli shared during the session (including uploaded stim, mobile screen share, or desktop screen sharing) will remain visible in the recording.
Note: In Germany, the participant stream will still be blurred by default, but researchers can choose to keep stimuli visible by selecting "Blurr Participant Stream Only"
Blur Limitation on Recordings
The unblur feature allows clearer visibility of shared stimuli and screens in your live research recordings. However, there are specific conditions where unblur will not be applied:
Minimum Duration Requirements
The shared content must meet the following minimum duration thresholds to be unblurred:
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Stimulus share: Must be longer than 7 seconds
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Screen share: Must be longer than 5.5 seconds
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Mobile screen share: Must be longer than 5.5 seconds
Unsupported Scenarios
Unblur will not apply to:
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Imported recordings
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Recordings made before the unblur feature was released, unless applied manually.
Older recordings may lack necessary metadata and may be affected by:
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Recording starting or stopping mid-session
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Gaps or unstreamed segments at the beginning
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Outdated recording layouts are incompatible with unblur
Note: While unblurring may work in some cases for older sessions, it is not recommended to use this option on older recordings.
Behavior with Clips
Clips created from a session will inherit the blur/unblur behavior of the original recording.