TL;DR:
To blur a YouTube video background, shoot with a shallow depth of field using an aperture setting below f/4, or apply post-production blur effects using Wondershare Filmora.
● Set your camera to an f-stop lower than f/2.8 and position your subject close to the lens with a background light source to create a circular bokeh effect.
● Standard zoom lenses typically lack the wide apertures required to achieve strong in-camera blurred backgrounds and bokeh effects.
● Conceal backgrounds during post-production by dragging Filmora's built-in Bokeh overlays, Tilt-Shift Circle, or Tilt-Shift Linear effects onto the track directly above your video footage.
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A lot of YouTubers like to vlog in front of blurred backgrounds. Blurring the background of your YouTube video is a fast way to make it look more professional – you stand out when you are entirely in focus, and everything behind you is blurry. Plus, it is an easy way to disguise the room you are vlogging from.
Even if your set is clean, there could be things like books behind you, which will distract viewers; they will be trying to read the spines. Blurring out the background of your shot makes your video look polished and keeps people's focus entirely on you.
Part 1: How to Blur Background of Your YouTube Video in Shooting Videos
Blurring your background is also how you create a beautiful bokeh lighting effect. Bokeh is when you blur lights in the background of your shot, creating halo-like circles of light. By attaching a filter with a shape cut out to the camera lens, you can even generate bokeh lights in other shapes, like hearts or stars.
Aperture refers to the hole in your lens which allows light into your camera. A narrow aperture lets in less light, and a wide aperture lets in more. The wider your aperture is, the shallower your depth of field will be. Widening your aperture also helps your camera perform better in low-light situations. Widening your aperture too much under the wrong circumstances can let in too much light and result in your footage being overexposed.
Depth of Field is the area of your image that is in focus. If you have a large depth of field, then objects close to and far away from your camera will all be in focus. Only a select area will be focused and the rest will be blurred if you have a shallow depth of field.
F-Stops are the measurement of an aperture's width. The higher your f-stop, the narrower your aperture will be. To create a blurred background or a bokeh effect, you need a wide aperture, and thus a small f-stop. F-stops are written like ‘f/1.4'. You need an f-stop of less than f/4 to blur your background, and less than f/2.8 for bokeh.
1. Blurring and Bokeh
Blurred backgrounds and bokeh are very closely related. A bokeh effect is essentially a blurred background that includes lights.
To achieve a blurred background or a bokeh effect, you need to have a shallow depth of field. That means a wide aperture and a low f-stop.
2. How to Blur your Background
Blur Video Background in Post-Production with Wondershare Filmora Video Editor
If you need to blur the video background after shooting, you can use some video editing software to add the bokeh effect or the tilt-off effect in post-production. Here, I will show you how to do that in Filmora.
Filmora is one of the most widely used video editing software among YouTubers. Its user-friendly interface and tutorial guide enables green-hands to start video editing quickly. Besides, you can find many free filters, effects, and elements pre-programmed, so you can use them directly without looking for presets and templates somewhere else.
1. Add Bokeh Filter to Video in Filmora
There are about 20 bokeh effects available in filters and overlays. You can find them easily by typing bokeh in the search bar in Effects.
Note: you should select Included to see all bokeh effects pre-programmed in Filmora. If you need more visual effects, just go to the Filmstock effects store.
Double click the bokeh effect to preview the result, and if you find the bokeh effect fits the video, just drop it to the track above the video. And the bokeh filter or overlay will be applied to the video automatically.
2. Use Tilt-Shift Circle/Linear Effect to Blur Video Background
Filmora features two tilt effects, tilt-shift circle and tilt-shift linear, which allows you to highlight people in the video, blur, and conceal the video background.
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