Free DME & DFIR Resources

Headlines bemoaning the possible delay and dismemberment of Apple's Final Cut Studio are becoming a mainstay of the Mac press. Which would be fine, if there was any substance to the story.

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Believing there is a future for optical discs, Sony and Panasonic have said they will jointly develop a new next-generation standard capable of storing a minimum of 300GB on a single piece of media.

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Wow, who'd a thunk it. We're officially 400 strong..."and groooowing"! That would've been hilarious if you could hear me sing it. Well, maybe not. Anywho, a big thank you to everyone for their support and participation in the Media-Geek community so far!

A small investment of time and knowledge from a great many, typically far exceeds the value of a large investment of time and knowledge from a select few; some of you have already helped to prove that point here. On behalf of myself and all of the other members who have benefited from your contributions to our community, thank you! (I know, you would've preferred cash. No need to write in and tell me.)

This year I helped Ocean Systems introduce a new 3-Day training class titled "Fundamentals of Video Evidence Recovery & Processing (FVRP)".  The course is designed for anyone who recovers, handles, processes or disseminates Digital & Multimedia Evidence (DME), regardless of prior video evidence training or experience. 

The course is based on industry Best Practices and focuses on obtaining the Best Evidence, and learning how to quickly get accurate images & video out for investigative leads.  It is predominantly hands-on, and will expose students to various Ocean Systems and Open Source solutions that can help.

Join me July 23rd through 25th at our offices in Burtonsville, MD or for one of our future training dates.  Hope to see you in class.  Have a great weekend my friends!

AMD has finally launched the long-anticipated followup to its Radeon HD 5970, its dual-GPU monster graphics card. Like its predecessor, the new Radeon HD 6990, code-named Antilles, combines two GPUs in a single package, and the result is the fastest graphics card you can buy.

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Popular media player VLC has been pulled from Apple's App Store at the request of one of the program's original developers--in a move that's caused some hard feelings in the world of open-source software.

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If you weren't part of the beta program you may be interested to know that the CS5 free trial downloads are finally available.

Visit www.adobe.com to download your free trial version today.

Zdenek Kalal’s Predator object-tracking software is almost uncanny. Show anything to its all-seeing camera eye, and it will quickly learn to recognize it and then track it, whether it fades into the distance, hides amongst other similar objects or — in the case of faces turns sideways.

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The Journal Gazette reports that the Fort Wayne police have released security video from an armed robbery that occurred last week at the McDonald’s at 1103 Goshen Ave. in Ft. Wayne, Indiana

The video is available on YouTube and is also playing on our home page. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 436-7867 or 1-800-237-7867. All information is confidential.

Back in May of this year Google announced Wave at their developer conference, and the social Web has been buzzing about Wave frantically ever since. Some love the concept, others are unimpressed and have nothing positive to say; I refer to the latter as schmucks (just saying). So, personally, I see big things coming from this browser-based collaboration tool, but who knows when. If you're not familiar with Google Wave yet, check out this video.

By Ryan Paul

Developers Ronald Bultje, David Conrad, and Jason Garret-Glaser are creating a native VP8 video codec implementation for the open source FFmpeg project. The aim of this effort is to bring first-class VP8 support to FFmpeg and demonstrate the feasibility of producing an independent VP8 implementation.

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I gave up my dream of one day owning a single remote control that could replace my basket of "universal" remotes several years ago. As you can imagine I lived in extreme sadness for quite some time, constantly criticizing myself for being so naive to believe such a device existed. As time passed however, I forgave myself for setting such an unrealistic goal and eventually moved on. Then yesterday the delivery man arrived, unknowingly carrying the answer to this long-forgotten dream.

Okay, to be honest, I haven't actually gone out and bought any universal remotes until just the other day. With that said, each time I've replaced a component in my entertainment system I end up with another "universal" remote that just doesn't cut it. Either it won't even work with one or more components or, as is more often the case, you lose a ton of functionality and have to keep the original remote close by anyway. While advanced universal remotes are nothing new, in my opinion finding one within a reasonable price range (below $100) is. If you're willing to invest $80-$100 in a universal remote that will actually replace all of your other remotes, so far I am very pleased with my Logitech Harmony Advanced Universal Remote for Xbox 360.

Following their January, 2017 meeting the Scientific Working Group on Digital Evidence (SWGDE) recently released 9 new documents for public review, including a new document called "SWGDE Framework of a Quality Management System for Digital and Multimedia Evidence Forensic Science Service Providers (DME-FSSPs)". Additionally, SWGDE published 11 Approved documents following their January meeting.

If you're involved in Forensic Multimedia Analysis, I would encourage you to visit the SWGDE website and review these documents as time permits. I'd like to thank all of those involved in SWGDE for their valuable time and contributions to our disciplines/communities.

Have a great weekend everyone. Be safe out there! - LC