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Haven't heard of Microsoft Media Platform? A tech evangelist explains that it combines several well-known applications.

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With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC.

Visit the VideoLAN website for details.

Time flies when you're having fun helping your peers and colleagues solve technical problems. Thank you to all who have shared their knowledge & expertise to-date!

I know I don't post to our LinkedIn group much, but I do post regularly to our site, Facebook page & my related Twitter account (@audiovideogeek). I plan to try to sharing on our LinkedIn group more often as well.

We've been expediting digital & multimedia investigations together as a community for over 5 years now. I'm really proud to be a part of that process, and you should be too. On behalf of our entire community, thanks for your valuable time and participation! All the best! - LC

As USB thumb drives and memory cards get larger and cheaper, it's getting easier to trust much more of your data to them. It's also much easier to mistakenly erase data or have them hiccup on you. And if you're in the habit of holding on to that data for too long -- for example, not transferring photos from your camera's memory card -- disaster is almost guaranteed to strike at some point. What happens then?

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This week the SWGDE released a couple of new DRAFT documents for public comment relating to DME acquisition. The links below are directly to the related PDF documents. For more information please visit www.swgde.org:

• SWGDE Best Practices for Data Acquisition from Digital Video Recorders
• SWGDE Best Practices for Digital and Multimedia Evidence Video Acquisition from Cloud Storage

Apple has released the anticipated OS X 10.6.7 update, after weeks of developer build seeds that were issued with no new features or fixes. The update is available in the normal versions of delta and combo updaters for both the client and server versions of OS X, and should be available via Software Update for most people. This update is especially important for owners of the new 2011 MacBook Pro systems because it addresses a graphics bug that caused hangs and crashes under heavy graphics load.

Read more: 
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20045613-263.html#ixzz1HIA7YZN5

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.

Seagate has unveiled new models of its Pulsar line of solid-state drives (SSD)--delivering performance, endurance, and reliability that business can trust. The new drives bring the benefits of SSD to organizations with demanding data storage needs.

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Many in the Forensic Video community are familiar with the free multimedia tools Camsort and IMAGE.  Their creator, Jimmy Schroering, has published a new consolidated home for these applications, along with other tools that he's developed or may be working on; check it out by visiting www.jdsdevelopment.com

Adobe yesterday patched 29 vulnerabilities in Reader, its PDF viewer, and 13 more in Flash, the popular Web media browser plug-in, as part of an even larger quarterly security update.

It was the first time that Adobe patched Reader X, the upgrade it issued last November that includes a "sandbox" anti-exploit technology in the Windows version.

Nearly all the Reader bugs were rated "critical," meaning that they could be exploited by attackers to plant malware on an unpatched system, although for several, Adobe wasn't certain that remote code execution was possible. Two of the 29 could lead to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, a common tactic by identity thieves who target browsers.

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I just returned from another great week of DME training at our office out on the east coast last week. One of the themes I've come to recognize through my travels teaching the fundamentals of DME Processing, is that even some of the most seasoned technicians and analysts don’t really understand the significance of hardware to accurate and proper processing of DME. It’s completely understandable why, given the marketing messages of some DME vendors, the fact that we're all constantly asked to do more with less, and the rate of related technological advancements.

brite-View’s Air SyncHD/DX device, also known as the BV-2822 if model numbers are your cup of tea, is a 1080p video/audio wireless transmission kit. To put it in plain English boys and girls, the brite-View Air SyncHD/DX is capable of sending Full High-Definition signals without the need to go through physical cables, hence lowering, nay, eliminating the chances of you (or some other member of the family) tripping over it. This purchase will feature a quartet of HDMI connections and two sets of component video inputs on the transmitter side.

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One of the features still in BETA for the new member's area is a video sharing service, which will allow users to upload videos or add their videos currently hosted elsewhere to the Media-Geek video library.  In addition to a searchable, categorized library, each member's profile will list their videos.

  Although this feature wasn't initially slated to be rolled out with our launch on the 11th, it now looks like it will be!  Get your training videos together, get registered, and come back next week to upload!