Free DME & DFIR Resources

I was out in the Seattle area Tuesday along with my colleague Ed Baker to provide a couple of free seminars on digital video evidence for members of the Washington Homicide Investigators Association (WHIA).

Many thanks to WHIA for the opportunity and hospitality, as well as to our employer Ocean Systems for their dedication to, and continued support of educating the LE community on the multitude of issues related to digital & multimedia evidence.

A couple weeks ago I was up in Vancouver to teach Ocean Systems’ DVR Assessment & Video Recovery training course, which was hosted by the Vancouver Police Department. Many thanks to our host agency and students, as it was another great week of training and information sharing. Next week I’ll be in Miami to provide a free seminar on Digital Video Evidence on Monday morning, followed by our 3-day DVR Recovery training course which will run Tuesday through Thursday.

It's a familiar scene in movies and on TV: a character, seeking to understand an issue involving computers, proclaims that an "expert" is needed. A teen is then brought on screen or referenced in dialogue.

The scene is funny because it illustrates something with which the audience is familiar anecdotally: the "digital divide."

While computer literacy is not universal, neither is it rare.

Complete Story w/Case Law References - click here

January 26-29, 2010 the Corona Police Department will host the Ocean Systems training course "Forensic Video Analysis - FVA 101, Introduction to Forensic Video Analysis".

The learning environment consists of lectures and hands-on exercises designed to allow the analyst to become familiar with the dTective system while working on real cases. Class is limited to 10 students so click here to find out more and get registered today!

Applications on display showcase real-time collaborative viewing and synchronized crowd-sourced video.

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http://media-geek.com/images/myblog/frontpage/social.jpg

Web 2.0 is a beautiful thing, as long as you don't let it consume you. Law enforcement and government organizations are slowly, but surely, beginning to adapt and take advantage of the many capabilities provided by social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter.

Even though we are one of those Web 2.0 resources, granted for a much smaller niché, I thought it'd be nice to invite those of you who do use them to keep abreast of Media-Geek and DMEpod developments with these tools.

My smartphone saga entered another new chapter yesterday, as I personally migrated from a Samsung SCH-i760 to the original Motorola Q. While I liked many of the features of the Samsung, I have been using it for several months now and have missed two important voice mail messages, which is simply unacceptable. Although both are Windows Mobile devices, at least with the Q I don't have to go looking for voice mail.

I first got my hands on the Q in June of 2006, within days of its release through Verizon Wireless. I had been testing various Windows mobile devices and had already submitted an order for three Treo 700w units, which were shortly thereafter sent back and replaced with new Q's. Now normally I give new products some time to grow and work through their initial bugs before I make a jump, but in this case I for some reason jumped on the bandwagon early; and subsequently, I suffered through the initial firmware issues.

A few months ago, my wife got up on a Sunday morning at 3:30am and stood in line at Toys-R-Us to pick up a Nintendo Wii for our son.  Neither her or I have every done anything like that before and trust me when I tell you she's not a morning person, so I was absolutely amazed that she not only got up that early, but even more so that she stood in line in the freezing cold for hours just to get the darn thing. 😮

This afternoon my son and I were playing Guitar Hero III on the Xbox 360 and out of the blue decided to finally configure the Wii for Internet connectivity.  As you probably know, Wii has a Wi-Fi adapter built in, but I just never took the time to configure our router and the settings on the Wii.  Well, within a few minutes of our decision we were online surfing the Web on our Toshiba 46" HD TV.

The Law Enforcement & Emergency Services Video Association has announced the introduction of a new certification. LEVA will now confer Certified Forensic Video Technician (CFVT) status on students who have performed video evidence processing for at least one year and successfully complete its three core courses within a five-year period:

• Basic Forensic Video Analysis & the Law,
• Intermediate Forensic Video Analysis & the Law and
• Advanced Forensic Video Analysis & the Law.

The courses, totaling 120 hours of lecture and hands-on instruction in LEVA’s Digital Multimedia Evidence Processing Lab at the University of Indianapolis, are designed to lead students to an advanced level of competency, knowledge and skills as Technicians in the science of forensic video analysis.

More Info...

At Adobe MAX 2010, held in Los Angeles last October, Adobe showed a sneak preview of an HTML5 authoring tool. The company cautions that any of its sneak peeks may not see the light of day, but today the company launched a public preview of the authoring tool, now named Edge.

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I've been doing geeky stuff for some time, you see.  Mostly in rooms with no windows, very few other people and that sweet hum of high-performance workstations.  I digress.  Your business = Your Website.  It should be a logical, intuitive user experience that is Secure, Responsive (Good performance & adapts to all screen sizes, etc.), and of course Cross-Platform. 

I may be able to help with that. 

I'm considering taking on one or two more non-profit/not-for-profit web development projects.  In other words, I only have so much time, and I prefer helping non-profits.  I can't do it for free, but pricing is reasonable and I can provide reputable references.  If interested, let's chat. 😎

Progressive Web Applications (PWA)

There's a lot to like about PWAs.  Some of my favorite things are performance, security, caching, integration with host OS, and of course a standardized user experience across Win10, macOS, Android, and iOS.  Oh, there's also no need to compile apps for multiple platforms, nor rely on Apple or Googles app stores for distribution (or anything else).  Yeah, I like that too.

In any case, I may be able to help you with that too, of course.  We'll see.  Thanks for your time & consideration.  Have an awesome day, my friends!

Assumptions can be dangerous things. Let’s say you assumed your software was displaying your AVI video file at the proper aspect ratio (ratio of width-to-height). Well, chances are pretty good you’d be wrong…no matter what software you’re using. What!? So the perp in my video evidence may be thinner and taller OR shorter and pudgy-er!? Yep.

Fact – the AVI file format does not provide a standardized way to report aspect ratio. Due to this shortcoming, applications cannot calculate the proper Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) if it is supposed to be different than the Storage/Sample Aspect Ratio (SAR). Therefore, applications "assume" a square Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and display the video at it's SAR, even if that's not correct...which is generally the case when dealing with DCCTV evidence.

Moral of this story? Don’t assume.

Another Jem from the Photoshop Jedi Master Deke McClelland. Think a discussion on Photoshop's Image Size tool is too basic for you? Fear for you I do, for that is the mindset of someone leaning toward the dark side.

"The essential Image Size command lets you scale an image on screen or in print. In this week's Photoshop Top 40 Countdown episode, Deke explains resampling and resolution, both of which affect the core quality of digital photographs."