Download the Redactor Agent Toolkit to start faster with Docker Compose examples, OpenAPI reference files, TypeScript definitions, and AI-agent-ready documentation for API and embedded editor workflows.
Sighthound Redactor is designed for teams working under strict security, privacy, and compliance requirements, where control, consistency, and deployment flexibility matter.
Out-of-Disk-Space Protection
When disk usage on the app data folder exceeds the threshold, the server replies with HTTP 503 to all requests except /health and resumes automatically once it drops. Configurable via REDACTOR_OODSTRACK_THRESHOLD_PCT (default 90%) and REDACTOR_OODSTRACK_INTERVALS.
Memory Diagnostics
A new tracker samples heap usage and logs new high-water marks, and can write a V8 heap snapshot when usage exceeds a configurable percentage of the heap limit. Controlled via REDACTOR_DIAG_OOMTRACK_INTVL, REDACTOR_DIAG_OOMTRACK_DUMP_PCT, and REDACTOR_DIAG_OOMTRACK_DUMP_PATH.
Optional Persisted Redaction History
Per-session history persistence is now opt-in via the new REDACTOR_HISTORY_ENABLED env var (default 0=off), reducing disk I/O for high-throughput API workloads. For in-depth audit logs you might want to set it to 1.
Server Stability
Internal optimizations got added to make the backend more robust and responsive under concurrent API (and sometimes regular user) load.
Operational Logging
Active session and operation counts are now logged on each change, and OS resource limits are logged at startup.
KeepAlive Interval with Polling Transport
Setting REDACTOR_FORCE_POLLING_TRANSPORT=1 could hit the server with too many keepAlive POSTs. This is now back to regular, recommended intervals.
Box Border Visuals
The borders for background / keep-unredacted boxes did not render properly. The original visual concept got improved for better visibility.
Reaction to Malformed Requests
All effective endpoint flows are now validated thoroughly againt malformed traffic (observed on publicly-exposed/non-firewalled hosts).
Smart Fill Redaction Mode
"Smart Fill" is now available as a dedicated redaction mode in the export UI, providing visually more pleasing redaction compared to fixed color filling.
Improved Audio Gap Filling
Audio gap filling during conversion now uses proper resampling and silence padding, improving handling of videos with incomplete or irregular audio streams. One side effect of this was that rendering was reported as success, but no output file had been actually created.
License Activation Error Reporting
License activation now correctly reports rejection errors: unknown serial numbers show "serial number not found" instead of "server unreachable", rejections are no longer masked as success when a valid license is already present, and mixed activation responses (some serials accepted, some rejected) now yield a partial success instead of a blanket error.
Context Menus During Object Creation
Context menus on existing detection objects are now suppressed while the add-new-objects mode is active, preventing potential race conditions and unintended edits.
GPU Pre-Configuration at Startup
GPU environment variables are now configured before any CUDA initialization can occur, preventing conflicts when GPU usage is disabled. New environment variables SIO_ACTIVE_CUDA_DEVICE and SIO_CUDA_DISABLED allow complete CUDA bypass at the driver level.
Early License Validation
The license is now validated before spawning a processing job, so invalid-license errors surface immediately rather than after a costly process start.
Bulk Selection Menu Labels
The bulk selection context menu now shows type-specific labels (e.g. "Remove videos", "Remove images") instead of the generic "Remove media" label.
Deinterlace Filter Applied Unconditionally
The deinterlace filter was being applied to all jobs instead of only when explicitly requested, this has now been optimized.
Error Dialogs Showing Raw JSON
Error dialogs in export, processing, and server-error flows now show a meaningful human-readable reason instead of raw JSON.
Crash While Probing for Video Decoders
On some drivers/hardware (CUDA confirmed) probing for the video decoding capabilities caused a crash, even if video decoding in general was set to CPU only mode (default). Such ahead-probing is now explicitly disabled.
Crash on Videos with Non-Standard Resolutions
Videos with frame widths not divisible by 4 (e.g. screen recordings at 1170px wide) caused the conversion stage to silently truncate the frame dimensions, leading to an out-of-bounds crash during redaction rendering. This has been fixed.
Video List Empty After Browser Refresh
Refreshing the browser while inside an open editor session could leave the video list empty. The list now correctly reloads on re-attach.
Track Resizing caused leftover objects
Race condition where sometimes objects lost their associated tracks, which caused the UI to error out. This has been fixed and former data inconsistencies being automatically mitigated.
Missing Labels
The vehicle and screen labels, for existing detection, were not shown in the video list.
Redactor expanded its AI-powered detection capabilities to identify more types of sensitive visual content, including documents, IDs such as driver licenses and passports, screens, heads, faces, people, and other selectable object classes. These improvements make automated video redaction more flexible for privacy, security, compliance, and evidence-review workflows.
Redactor added support for importing H.265/HEVC video files while continuing to render exports in H.264 for broad playback compatibility. Earlier updates also improved handling of interlaced videos, unusual resolutions, audio-only media, and videos with incomplete audio tracks, helping teams work with a wider range of real-world media.
Editing workflows became faster and easier with undo/redo support, keyboard shortcuts, Escape-to-cancel behavior, object grouping, object timeline views, improved object selection, Shift-click range selection, and clearer selected-object styling. These updates help reviewers make precise redactions with less friction.
Redactor introduced tools for background redaction, allowing teams to redact an entire scene while keeping selected people or objects visible. This is useful for privacy-first workflows where only specific subjects should remain unredacted and everything else should be protected.
Export workflows were strengthened with clearer progress indicators, export range controls, improved image quality, better color accuracy, custom export filenames via the API, and more reliable rendering behavior. Redactor also fixed several export edge cases, including missing frame issues, incomplete blur coverage, and incorrect success states when no output was produced.
The Redactor API gained several automation-focused improvements, including operation queuing, transient operations, webhook retries, operation status summaries, audio-region support, export-range support, custom metadata display, TypeScript type definitions, OpenAPI validation, and session data snapshots. These changes make Redactor easier to integrate into automated redaction pipelines and developer workflows.
Cloud and storage workflows were improved with stronger S3 integrity checks, better session restoration from storage buckets, preserved session data when optional files are missing, synchronized overlay files, support for AWS/S3 usage without explicit credentials, and more reliable remote session storage behavior.
Redactor added audit data generation, session history exports, media hash generation, export hash support, and companion session metadata files. These improvements help teams maintain stronger records of redaction activity, support compliance reviews, and troubleshoot media-processing workflows more effectively.
Redactor improved crash recovery, processing stability, reconnection handling, live recording reliability, GPU fallback behavior, CPU fallback behavior, memory handling, session cleanup, and backend resilience. These updates help keep redaction workflows stable even with large files, long sessions, challenging networks, or limited hardware.
Administrators gained more control over GPU acceleration, including VRAM-based defaults, CPU fallback behavior, and environment-variable configuration. These updates make Redactor more adaptable across high-performance workstations, servers, and lower-spec environments.
Administrative workflows were improved with clearer license status and expiration visibility, easier log downloads from settings, better support-package generation, improved crash dump collection, user visibility for “In Use” videos, and stronger startup handling for expired licenses.
Redactor improved everyday usability with clearer auto-detection settings, keyboard shortcut discovery, reconnecting indicators, updated context menus, folder support, media search, upload-to-current-folder behavior, localization improvements, and more visible support errors. These changes make the application easier to understand for both technical and non-technical users.
Redactor added safer data-reset workflows, stronger session identifier enforcement, improved filename and URI sanitation, better TLS and CORS configuration options, and more complete cleanup behavior for sessions, exports, and state drops.
Earlier releases resolved issues affecting live recording, object deletion, audio timelines, import cancellation, export previews, speech transcription, session cleanup, media loading, state drops, support dialogs, socket disconnections, and API data imports. These fixes improved day-to-day reliability across desktop, server, and API-driven Redactor deployments.
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