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Members can now create work groups to organize, communicate, and more efficiently work with other Media-Geek members! Groups are a great way to work with and share information with your team, committee, task force, etc... To learn more about the all new Media-Geek Group features check out the related announcement in our members forum!

Oh yeah, BTW - we also just completed upgrading our private messaging system for members, providing a few more features and significantly improving performance. Now you can use auto-complete to enter recipients (again), add a CC line, create your own contact lists for sending to multiple members and more. When you get a second, check it out.

Commencing the process of forming its Standards Committee, the Consortium of Digital Forensic Specialists (CDFS) is pleased to announce its appointment of Dr. Pavel Gladyshev to the position of Chairman of the Standards Committee. In this role, Dr. Gladyshev will facilitate the committee's mission of uniting practitioners from all sectors to discuss and develop digital forensic standards.

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A pair of researchers from Dartmouth University have devised a metric for quantifying how much a digital photograph has been altered by digital photo-editing techniques.

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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.

It's been a very interesting and exciting year for Magnet Forensics.  New products, new acquisitions, new training opportunities, more awards & industry recognition, and still so many exciting things to come!  Don't miss the Magnet User Summit 2024, being held in Nashville, TN April 15th through 17th, 2024.  Be sure to also check out the pre-conference training opportunities.

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.

Tomorrow's the official launch of Media-Geek.com and we've added another great feature to the new members area, a categorized events calendar.  The new calendar will be viewable by all visitors; however, only registered members will be able to add and manage events listed in the calendar.

The concept behind the calendar is simple - to provide a consolidated calendar listing the multitude of forensic related training events, conferences, and meetings.  The initial categories implemented include Photography Training, Image Processing & Analysis Training, Forensic Video Training, and Forensic Conferences & Meetings.

Sorenson Media introduced the latest version of its popular video encoder today with the release of Squeeze 8. Improvements include greater adaptive bitrate support, x264 support, enhanced GPU acceleration, and integration with Sorenson Squeeze Server. In addition, Sorenson will offer a lite version for smaller needs and budgets.

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Although disc-based storage is not as widely used as it once was for digital evidence archiving, it remains a viable solution when properly implemented and managed. In fact, many of the world’s largest technology companies are using and/or exploring disc-based storage systems for long-term offline storage of petabytes of customer data (e.g. Facebook uses 10,000 Blu-ray discs to store 'cold' data). They do so, however, in a managed environment with a thorough understanding of the medium’s strengths and limitations.

Many in law enforcement use write-once disc-based media for MASTER evidence storage, as it continues to be recommended via various industry best practice documents. Unfortunately, not everyone involved in the evidence chain understands the limitations and best practices as they relate to the care and handling of disc-based media. Adhesive labels, permanent markers, and ballpoint pens have destroyed more evidence than I care to even think about.

Abobe's Photoshop Express(BETA) was made available in late March, but I just haven't had the time to fiddle with it. I was poking around the Adobe site earlier today (avoiding my to-do list like the plague) and finally decided to give it a whirl. I intended to spend a few minutes checking it out. I ended up spending a few hours playing with it and completely blowing off my to-do list for the afternoon. I hate it when that happens.

Photoshop Express is another Rich Internet Application (RIA) that, to me, shouts Software as a Service (SaaS) is unquestionably the future of software delivery. Sure many RIA's today have limited capability (or more bugs than your average road kill on a warm summer day), but the fact of the matter is SaaS is in its infancy.

The Minneapolis Police Department Crime Lab is seeking to hire a Forensic Video Analyst. Applications will be accepted from Monday, October 22, 2012 through Friday, November 9, 2012. Complete details can be found online at www.minneapolismn.gov. A direct link to the city's job listings is provided below for your convenience.

Minneapolis Career Opportunities

While previous jumps in compression technology have taken years to find adoption, we may see PCs and other devices that can play HEVC files on the market by the end of 2013

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I'm just back from a week of vacation, all of which was literally spent moving into our new home...a block and half away. Ugh, what a process. With that behind us now, I'm excited to get back to work on the DME Resources online training library!

I will be completing the Navigating & Using DME Resources training course over the 4th of July weekend, and we're still on schedule to launch the first DME related courses prior to the end of summer.

If you or your agency have a DME related topic or tool that you'd like additional training on, shoot me a note and I'll see if I may be able to help (or at least put you in touch with someone who can). Thanks for your continued participation and interest. Have a great 4th of July weekend everyone, be safe!