Free DME & DFIR Resources

It's after 4:00 am in the morning and I'm writing about codecs.  That isn't right.  Just curious what lossless video codecs others are using or have used and/or compared for forensic screen capture?  I'm sure the most common answer will be TechSmith's TSCC, but there are others out there that work quite nicely and are priced just right....FREE.

I posted a new member poll on the topic, which you'll find on the right-hand side of your profile page.  Also recently added the free LZO and GZIP based CamStudio codec to our files & downloads library and have been fiddling with some others.    Are you using something else, or do you prefer to keep all captures uncompressed?

Adobe on Wednesday announced a major redesign of its free online editing tools at Photoshop.com, giving consumers one less reason to BitTorrent the real McCoy. The suite of rich Web apps has been redesigned, renamed, and reorganized to make sharing and editing photos online easier. But the real improvement to these tools is easy access: The Photoshop Express Editor is now open to all visitors--no sign-up or sign-in required.

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The Western New York RCFL, US Attorney's Office, NY Attorney General and various other entities are sponsoring a one-day seminar entitled "Search & Seizure of Digital Evidence", to be held on March 31, 2009 at the SUNY Buffalo North Campus Center for Tomorrow.  See attached PDF for details.

FFmpeg is a great tool to have in your toolbox if you’re a multimedia geek. If you live mostly in the world of Microsoft Windows and have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of files to process though they lose a little luster. Sure, there are tons of free applications built on FFmpeg that provide some limited batch processing capability, but usually they're just that; limited. Here’s a simple way you can process hundreds of files from one format to another, using the full capability of your FFmpeg install.

First, which scripting languages do you know? Great, we won’t need those, but that’s really cool that you know them. Given that you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you can write plain text into a text file. I don’t like to assume anything, but I’m feeling pretty good about that one. Alright, let’s get started.

If you plan on buying a Blu-ray player in 2011, don't be surprised if the back panel is lacking a component video output. A surprising number of mainstream 2011 Blu-ray players, (such as the Panasonic DMP-BDT210, Samsung BD-D5700, LG BD670, to name a few) are omitting the red, green, and blue video jacks, which means buyers will have to rely on HDMI for high-def Blu-ray video signals.
It's all about AACS

We can't blame manufacturers for omitting the component out of new players. For one, it's not a huge loss, as the vast majority of buyers will be using the HDMI output for video. But there's another issue: even the new Blu-ray players that are including component video connections will only output 480i signals, rather than high-def 1080i.

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With a public beta of Photoshop CS6 arriving tonight, Adobe is moving video editing from a sideshow to center stage, matching the real-world merging of still photography and videography.

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Disappointed by the lack of support for multiple displays and OpenCL in embedded GPUs these days? Then AMD may have just made your day. It's just debuted its new "desktop level" Radeon E6760 discrete GPU, which packs both OpenCL support and Eyefinity-enhanced support for no less than six independent displays. 

Full story:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/02/amd-debuts-first-embedded-gpu-with-support-for-opencl-and-six-di/&category=classic&icid=eng_latest_art

"VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images."

One of the tools many of us keep in the toolbox for recovering from CD/DVD was recently updated to support other types of media, to include removable drives and hard disks.  It's also added support for NTFS.  Not familiar with IsoBuster?  Check it out at www.isobuster.com

Over the next few weeks, I'll be periodically performing some maintenance and upgrades to the Media-Geek platform.  As a result, the site may occasionally be unavailable for brief periods.  If you're unable to access the site for an extended period (e.g. several hours) or believe you've found a bug or error during this time, please notify me via PM (private messaging) or our contact form.  Be safe, and happy holidays to you and yours. - LC

I recently cut the cable TV cord with the assistance of the Tablo 4-Tuner OTA DVR, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts on it.

Over The Air (OTA) HDTV

First I'll point out that I don't watch a lot of TV, maybe a few hours a week; however, my family does, and likes to keep up with several TV shows. We've always been cable TV subscribers, both with Time Warner back on the East coast, and Comcast out here on the West coast. We've used the DVR hardware and services from each since they began offering the option(s).

Upcoming CS6 versions of Adobe's flagship video software change significantly, with a streamlined interface for Premiere Pro and performance improvements for After Effects.

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Free broadband Internet connectivity is definitely a good thing, but at the cost of others, not so much. Even though the issue of "stealing" bandwidth from unsecure Wi-Fi networks is still a grey area legally in most places, here are a few helpful tips on how help make sure your home wireless network isn't being used by the neighbors: