Free DME & DFIR Resources

The Scientific Working Group on Imaging Technology (SWGIT - www.swgit.org) has released a new DRAFT document that is open for public comment until September 14, Best Practices for the Analysis of Digital Video Recorders.

Click here to view the PDF >

SanDisk on Wednesday announced a Secure Digital card that can store data for 100 years, but can be written on only once.

The WORM (write once, read many) card is "tamper proof" and data cannot be altered or deleted, SanDisk said in a statement. The card is designed for long-time preservation of crucial data like legal documents, medical files and forensic evidence, SanDisk said.

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Evidence Technology Magazine has published their May-June, 2010 issue featuring a story on Forensic Video. The story was written by LEVA's Principal Forensic Video Instructor and features several LEVA members. The question you need to answer: Can video evidence be trusted?

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LEVA has announced that they will be providing their Photographic/Video Comparison Course May 18-22, 2009 in the LEVA DME Lab at the University of Indianapolis. The Photographic/Video Comparison focuses on the science of comparing known objects, vehicles, clothing and humans with CCTV images of questioned objects, vehicles, clothing and humans.

For LEVA's complete training schedule - click here.

It's the video millennium. Every modern mobile phone is a video camera and a video player. Video displays are everywhere, from taxicabs to endcaps. Webcams perch like pigeons on every major tourist destination in the world. So it's no surprise that video sharing has become an industry, and that legal controversy has followed. The Southern District of New York recently announced its much-anticipated decision in Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube Inc., 2010 WL 2532404 (S.D.N.Y. June 23, 2010), granting summary judgment in favor of YouTube. The decision breaks no new ground, but it continues a trend: Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, owners of copyrights to videos will have the burden of policing the internet.

Full story:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202466695461

In Steven Levy's classic, sprawling, rapturous ode to the birth of the hacker movement, the book Hackers, Captain Crunch is a bit player--a hacker who took his name from the toy whistle available free in boxes of Captain Crunch When blown into a pay phone, this whistle could be used to make free long distance calls.

Full story:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26111/

1080 for sure, that's in the name.  They're all the same thing folks, and I'll be darned if I can find any formal video specification referencing any of them, so they share that too.  Is it all just marketing BS?  No, but surely the confusion has been leveraged by some DCCTV manufacturers, resellers, and the like to their benefit.

Avid will be releasing a new version of Pro Tools soon that will be entirely free, called Pro Tools | First. It doesn't appear to be a severely stripped down version either, so I'm anxious to give a look first hand. If you are too, you can learn more and sign up to be notified at http://www.avid.com/ptfirst

The Ontario Provincial Police recently announced a Forensic Identification Video Analyst opening in Orillia, Ontario. 

For further information visit http://www.gojobs.gov.on.ca:80/Preview.aspx?JobID=8163

A couple of years ago I did a series of posts on aspect ratio correction of DCCTV recordings; more specifically DCCTV recordings captured by analog CCTV cameras, and correcting Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) for forensic interpretation. I pointed out in my posts and the subsequent Video & Display Standards Chart, that the one exception that I'm aware of where a DCCTV recording captured by an analog CCTV camera shouldn't be displayed 4:3, was the relatively new 960H format.

It's 2:30 am EST and I'm testing browser compatibility.  What's wrong with this picture?   Anyway, I've tested most of the new member area functionality with IE7 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.7 and above; so if you're using the latest from either you're golden!

I've also tested IE6 extensively and noted a few issues related to layout, predominantly due to IE6 and IE5.5 not digging the use of PNG files  At some point I may go back and resolve these issues either through "creative code" or simply converting the images to GIFs, but that likely won't be for several weeks.  Hey, why not just update your darn browser already...they're both free you know!!!  🤪

MEDIA COURTOUSE — Tahmir Craig is too short to have been the man who shot and killed a minister’s son in broad daylight last Memorial Day in Chester.

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Whew. I've been crazy busy lately and have been meaning to throw up a post about this product for a few weeks. It's one of the latest freeware programs I've added to my thumbdrive, which has come in quite handy for resolving various common PC problems via a point-and-click interface. If you regularly get calls from friends, family, co-workers, etc., regarding their PC problems, you might want to consider this neat little freeware ap - Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal

Advanced WindowsCare V2, made by IObit, looks to resolve issues that cause less than optimal performance in Windows based PCs. The personal version: