With CCTV probably being the number one piece of digital evidence used in cases, many officers will have asked questions like, how do I get the footage; why is it not playing; or how can I get an image? It’s important therefore to understand why we have ended up here. Why digital video, specifically from the surveillance industry, is such a huge pain in the proverbial!
As computers and digital video started to creep into normality, the surveillance companies started to think of ways to say, and prove, that they were better than the other. One of the easiest ways to do this was to use a bespoke recording method and format, to suggest that it was better than the other. This is where it starts to go pear-shaped.
Very quickly we ended up with non-standard video files, requiring a player that could not install on a Force computer, with no method to interrogate, analyze, validate or process the evidence as required by the investigation.
It has been nearly 20 years since the start of Digital Video Recorders, and you will be glad to hear that things are improving. But, it is going to take a long time for many of these poor systems to get replaced by ones that are fit for purpose.
Read the full article published on Police Oracle.
