How the Video Background Blur Tool Works
AnyTool blurs video backgrounds entirely in the browser using a self-hosted single-threaded ffmpeg.wasm engine — the core (ffmpeg-core.js + the 32 MB wasm) is bundled from npm and served as a same-origin asset, so nothing is fetched from a CDN. In the reframe mode the filtergraph splits the source into two copies: one is scaled to COVER the target aspect ratio and blurred with the gblur filter to fill the frame as the background, while the other is scaled to FIT and overlaid centered on top — giving the popular blurred-bars look that fits any clip into a new aspect (for example portrait into landscape). A simpler full-frame mode just applies gblur to the whole video. The result is re-encoded to H.264/AAC and read back as an MP4 blob. This is a deterministic filter effect, not ML person segmentation. Single-threaded is deliberate: the multi-threaded core needs SharedArrayBuffer + cross-origin isolation (COOP/COEP), which would block cross-origin ad iframes.
- Runs client-side — the video is never uploaded
- Self-hosted ffmpeg core (bundled) — no CDN
- Reframe: source split — COVER+gblur background, FIT overlay
- Centered overlay gives the blurred-bars reframing look
- Full-frame gblur mode also available
- Filter effect, not ML segmentation; H.264/AAC MP4
- No backend, no signup, no size cap
