It’s here! The first update to Amped Replay and we couldn’t be more excited to share with you the new features!
Amped Replay is a universal player and converter for proprietary and standard video files, with basic enhancement, annotation and redaction functions, designed to be used by everyone from those on the immediate frontline of law enforcement to the more intermediate lab workers ‘behind-the-scenes’. Our work didn’t stop following the launch this past March, and we have had nothing but praise from police officers around the world who have been seeing the benefits of Replay in their case workflows.
Let’s not delay any further and take a look at what’s new!
We really enjoy hearing from our users. We want to learn about your challenges so that we can try to help you find solutions for those challenges, and we really like getting to know you on a more personal level, learning about your interests and hobbies. If you want to share your story with us, get in touch!
Blaine Davison, from the Norman PD, has been an enthusiastic user for many years. As a former President and board member of LEVA, he strove to advance the science and practice of video forensics for all of North America. Colleagues in the forensics community have often mentioned his name, referring to him as someone who is able to get really amazing results on hard cases with Amped FIVE. He’s one of those users who is able to take advantage of the full workflow of Amped FIVE: from conversion of video formats, to enhancement, analysis, and presentation.
Martino Jerian, Amped Software CEO and Founder
Blaine, tell us a bit about yourself. What is your background and your current role at the Norman, Oklahoma Police Department?
I’m currently a Detective, Forensic Video Analyst and Digital Evidence Administrator for the Norman, Oklahoma Police Department. I originally studied Communications and Technical Journalism while at University and worked for a year as a reporter for the ABC affiliate station in Rapid City, South Dakota after graduating. I then relocated to Oklahoma and started working “temporarily” as a 911 Operator for the local Sheriff’s Department thinking at some point, I would resume working in television news. I’m proud to say that “temporary” position turned into a twenty-five-year law enforcement career.
Dear Amped blog loyal friends, welcome to this Tip Tuesday! Today, we’ll play the part of James Bond, and see what miraculous things he could have achieved if he only had Amped FIVE! Jokes aside, we’ll see how two rarely used filters can help you read very hidden writings on paper.
This tip really needs an example to start from. We are given this picture of an Amped Software pen (if you still don’t have one, visit our booth in one of the upcoming events we’ll take part in!), and we’re asked to “find the message in it”. And no, this is not a tip about metadata!
Welcome, dear Amped blog friends! This week’s tip is dedicated to Amped Authenticate‘s Camera Identification filter, which received important upgrades with the last software release! Today we’ll see how you can check images against multiple cameras in batch, saving a lot of time!
Camera Identification is one of the core features in Amped Authenticate: it has been present since the beginning and, not surprisingly, it has always attracted our users’ attention. In fact, the possibility to link an image to the exact device that captured it has a dramatic impact on investigations (e.g., it may help to prove that a child abuse picture was generated by the device found in the suspect’s home).
Welcome, Tip Tuesday lovers! Those of you who are creatures of habit will be shocked: for the first time, we’re dedicating a tip to Amped DVRConv! For those who don’t know, DVRConv is Amped’s solution to the obnoxious problem of unplayable CCTV video files. It shares the powerful video conversion engine featured in Amped FIVE, so we have been asked from time to time “why should we get DVRConv if we already have Amped FIVE?”. This week’s tip tries to answer this question.
Police worldwide are increasingly relying on digital information from various sources to help solve crimes, including security videos. In order to improve the safety of their citizens, the Chicago Police Department has opened two new Tech Centers that include several tools, including Amped Software products, to help fight crime.
Surveillance video can be one of the more impactful forms of evidence and oftentimes the only source of evidence in a case. It’s the first port of call for any investigator building a case. Time is often crucial and the quicker a detective can obtain and view footage the better.
With Amped FIVE, Chicago Police officers were able to analyze and process surveillance video from around a crime scene to help speed up the process of capturing the suspects. With FIVE they are able to improve the exposure of a video to get a better view of a vehicle in that video and with the 100+ filters available in one complete software package, they are able to restore the image in order to identify the vehicle model and the license plate.
“They went out and they processed every video,” Bureau of Detectives Chief Melissa Staples said. “They were able to play it and download it and review it. If it were not for the video and the license plate readers that our department has, we would not have gotten to where we were as quickly as we did with an arrest in that case.”
Click here to learn more about the new Area Tech Centers.
Contact us to learn more about our full line of solutions that have been developed to assist an entire organization with all investigations, starting from the field, up to the forensic lab, and then to the courtroom.
Dear Tip Tuesday lovers, thanks for being here in the heart of summer! Today’s hot tip is about the Color Deconvolution filter, which is one of the (many!) “wow”-generating tools in Amped FIVE.
We had a case where a calligraphy expert was asked to authenticate a signature on a document. We can’t publish that image on the blog, so we’re using a home-made sample for this tip:
Ciao Tip Tuesday friends! This week we have a special surprise: we are pleased to dedicate the first Tip to our newest product Amped Replay. Replay is an enhanced video player designed to help even nontechnical users in their daily work with forensic images and videos. It covers the acquisition, triage, essential enhancement, redaction, annotation, and exporting phases. All of that served with Amped’s special seasoning, that is, forensic soundness. For a full product presentation, just visit this page, or watch this video. Today, we’re focusing on a great feature in Amped Replay: the Magnify annotation tool, which lets you create compelling and attractive zooms of selected areas in your frame.
Let’s imagine a case where a robbery takes place in a chemical factory, and the offenders drive away in a car. The stolen material could be easily weaponized. The ability to readily send out a video to the media showing the vehicle means that you can turn all citizens into patrols looking for the criminals’ car. But you need to do it quickly, in minutes.
The closest police patrol arrives on scene and the officers head to the CCTV recorder and grab a video showing the offenders’ vehicle. The officers get their laptop out, fire up Amped Replay, and the video is ready for inspection. The suspects’ vehicle is quite visible, as shown below:
One thing we are very proud of here at Amped is the efficiency and compatibility of our products. Although you will get the most out of Amped FIVE with a nice performing machine, you can also use it on any modern, and often not so modern, laptop. A few years ago we were able to deliver a decent training course in a location where users had a Pentium laptop with 1 GB of RAM. Definitely not something we really recommend, but it somewhat worked with most of our examples.
Most of our products are offered in the same installerin both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. Despite the discontinuation of Windows XP in 2014, 12 years after its launch, we are still trying to support it in our products, to guarantee maximum compatibility of our products with any system.
Over the years, however, keeping the compatibility with Windows XP has been an increasing struggle and every time we need to update external third-party libraries or tools some new issues related to Windows XP support pop up. We are at a point where we are not sure anymore if it’s worth still spending our precious development time towards this need. We hope none of you still need to use Windows XP as the main working machine, but there may be some cases where this is still helpful (for example controlled codec installation on a Windows XP virtual machine for legacy proprietary video formats). Furthermore, using Windows XP has become very dangerous since security updates are not even available anymore.
So, the
question is, should we kill Windows XP support in Amped FIVE (and our other
products) or there is a reason to keep it?
Please help us with this one-minute survey, or contact us if you want to discuss this with us.
We are happy to announce that Amped Software will be presenting and exhibiting at the IAI International Educational Conference, taking place from Sunday, August 11 – Saturday, August 17, 2019, at the Peppermill Resort and Conference Center, in Reno, Nevada, USA.
The IAI Conference is the largest organized event in the world that provides a full week of high quality, cutting edge education and hands-on training in forensic physical evidence examination and crime scene processing.
You will be able to join lectures on the latest technology, techniques, and research, sign up for limited space hands-on workshops to practice basic to advanced skills, and attend meetings and panels that provide an opportunity to discuss the latest professional topics and developments. Attendees will have the opportunity to experience a full week of professional, scientific and technical lectures in the disciplines of Biometric, Bloodstain Pattern, Crime Scene, Digital, Facial Identification, Footwear and Tire Track, Forensic Art, Photography, DNA, Ten Print and Latent Print Evidence.
The IAI Conference is the best place for experts in these fields to stay up to date on the latest techniques, technologies, and issues in forensic science, and to learn more about quality assurance, standards developments, and the most comprehensive forensic certification program in the world.
Come see us at Booth 521 to learn about Amped Software’s latest technology for your forensic image and video analysis needs.
And don’t miss the following presentations from Amped Software’s Blake Sawyer, Technical Sales, Support and Training for North America.
W043 – Using FFmpeg for video playback and analysis Friday, August 16 10:00 AM
W047 – Digital video files under a microscope: Understanding the binary composition of digital video file formats Thursday, August 15 8:00 AM
