From legacy format compatibility to enhanced timing control, this Amped FIVE update strengthens your forensic video workflows. Get up to speed on HAR/LWX support, improved playback and timestamp logic, smarter Convert DVR defaults, and practical filter upgrades for faster video evidence processing.
Hey there! Yes, it’s Amped FIVE update day. Over the past few months, our developers have been busy integrating many of your feature requests, improving current functionality, and fixing those nasty bugs. We have a very full roadmap for 2026, and this first update of the year brings a lot of the foundations for many other future advancements.
Before we get into what’s new in our latest revision, we must start with formats. In a world of unregulated proprietary video, the demuxing and decoding come first!
See the New Features in Action!
Key Takeaways
- This Amped FIVE update adds broader evidence compatibility, including full support for legacy HAR (COP Security) and LWX (Loronix Verint) formats with video, audio, and frame-accurate timestamp handling.
- Playback control is more precise and investigation-friendly, with options to skip frames while preserving audio timing, plus clearer control between Average FPS, PTS, and Date/Time playback modes.
- Variable Frame Rate (VFR) is easier to detect early, thanks to updated player-bar frame markers and dynamic FPS feedback in the status bar.
- Timestamp workflows are more reliable, with improved missing-data detection in .time files and better support for interpolation through Adjust Timestamp when frame timing gaps exist.
- Convert DVR defaults are now optimized for forensic reliability: MKV for stream copy and MP4 for transcoding, while still allowing manual format override.
- Frame-removal workflows now include Video Duration control, letting users choose between retaining original duration or updating duration.
- Common filters got practical upgrades: more flexible Resize modes, improved Aspect Ratio input/control, and smarter Frame Averaging recomputation for better performance.
- Additional productivity upgrades include AV1 decoding integration, relative font sizing in text filters, improved writer/export behavior, new import exclusions, and a broad set of bug fixes across playback, sync, and reporting.
Formats
As with every new release, the Amped Engine, which runs inside Amped FIVE, gets another update. Our codec wizards have been hard at work deciphering the bits and bytes of CCTV video, audio, and the all-important time/date stamps.
Of particular interest in this release is the support for the legacy HAR format by COP Security. Video, audio, and frame-accurate time/date stamps are fully demuxed for you. Similarly, we have full support now for the LWX format from Loronix Verint. These formats may be a few years old, but they are still commonly acquired as evidence. We hope that our support for these formats helps you in your investigations.
Thank you to everyone who has submitted files for analysis and support to the codec team. With your help, we learned that these proprietary formats exist. Developing the forensic demuxers, extractors, and decoders helps everyone within the forensic video community.
Player
We start in the Player bar and, more specifically, the Playback Control options.
Playback Control
We have enriched the options available here to allow much finer control on video playback.
When a video is loaded, the first parameters to observe are within the Video Loader. Which video engine is selected? Perhaps review how the luminance and color are being decoded.
The next step moves from decoding to playback, and this often involves the evaluation of timing.
The first addition is the ability to skip frames during playback. If a video cannot be played back at full frame rate, perhaps due to its large resolution or Frames Per Second (FPS), then having “Audio precedence” checked allows you to skip frames during playback. This preserves the timing of the audio.
Important: if paused, and you move frame-by-frame forward or backward, you will NOT skip frames.
We then have the regular Playback controls. As a reminder:
- Average FPS from PTS Duration – This calculates the FPS by dividing the number of frames by the duration of the video stream. The result is a Constant Frame rate (CFR)
- PTS – This plays back the stream according to each frame’s Presentation Timestamp. This would allow for Variable Frame Rate (VFR).
- Date/Time – This uses the frame-accurate time data within the chain, either from a proprietary .time file or a standard subtitle with timing information.
In the image above, you will notice that the Date/Time is greyed out. This could be caused by a chain with no Date/Time filter, or that your position in the filter chain is before the timestamp. It can only be used to control the playback if there is data for every frame. Remember that you can use Adjust Timestamp to correct this.
We then have two new entries. These allow you to quickly triage the frame rates that are within the metadata of the file.
Before this release, it would have been necessary to obtain the frame rates from within Advanced File Info and then use the Change Frame Rate filter.
They are separated from the previous controls as they are for triage and evaluation ONLY. If you move away from the Video Loader filter, to further filters in the chain, they will be greyed out.
As you can see from above, the ability to use Date/Time has now become possible as we are further down the filter chain, and we have a time filter. However, we can no longer use the metadata frame rates.
If you wish to use those, after evaluation, then a Change Frame Rate filter will be required to be added to the chain. They will not pass through to an output without your interaction.
Reflecting Time Variability in the Player Bar
Staying within the Player bar, we have made a visual change to the frame markers. You may notice that in the example video used below, they are not evenly spaced out within the Player window.
This video has a highly Variable Frame Rate (VFR).
Towards the start, there is only a short amount of time per 100 frames, but nearer the middle, it’s over double. Identifying VFR quickly in the early stages of an investigation may help you to evaluate timing and answer questions surrounding synchronisation problems.
Status Bar
The improvements in the Status Bar are directly linked to the playback controls we previously looked at. To assist you, and for you to know exactly what frame rate is being used during playback, the FPS displayed in the status bar will update dynamically.
In the above Image, we are playing a video using the Date/Time information to control the timing. Consequently, our frame rate is now calculated and displayed.
If we were using either of the PTS timing controls, can you see what would be displayed in the status bar?
It’s in the File Info Tool above: 19.9667 FPS.
Remember, Average FPS is Constant Frame Rate, whereas PTS allows for Variable Frame Rate.
Load Timestamp
We mentioned previously that the Adjust Timestamp filter is often required when a timestamp is not frame-accurate.
From this release, we have made further advancements to the loading of timestamp data after extraction from a proprietary format.
Many of you would have seen the following warning message. This is commonly presented when the format only has time information associated with every I frame.
We have made several improvements to the analysis of the timing information, and you will now see this warning if data is missing anywhere within the .time file.
After acknowledging this message, we can open up the timestamp from within the filter.
Very quickly, we can see that this file had missing time data at the start. Frames 0-4 did not have any associated data.
Adjust Timestamp can now be used to interpolate these missing values using the most appropriate method.
Time Files
As we were looking at timestamps, we made a small adjustment to our time data demuxer. When a proprietary CCTV file contains date and time information but no milliseconds, we will no longer add .000 into the .time file. You can obviously add or interpolate this yourselves through the Adjust Timestamp filter. To preserve time integrity, however, if the data is not there, we will not add it.
Convert DVR
This brings us nicely to Convert DVR, and an eagerly anticipated change.
The default settings for Stream Copying proprietary CCTV are now set to the MKV container format.
The default settings for Transcoding have been set to the MP4 Container Format.
As with most things, you can always override this and select your container of choice. However, after many years and many, many files, we have evaluated that the most reliable and safest way to contain extracted streams from CCTV files is the flexible MKV container.
Don’t forget the override functionality, though; You may have a corrupted index within an AVI, and wish to create another AVI with a fixed index. Changing the Output Format to AVI would do exactly that.
Remove Frames and Remove Duplicates
Within the Remove Frames filter and the Remove Duplicates filter, you will now find a new Video Duration control option.
Updating the duration will change the video length, while retaining the original duration ensures the last frame is held for the appropriate time. Remember that using Remove Frames causes the audio to be removed if present, so as to prevent synchronization issues.
Resize
The filter now has two alternative working modes, Scale Factor and Pixel Dimensions.
A small change, but a big improvement. Specifically, this allows you greater flexibility when copying and pasting the filter to other chains or when using Filter Presets.
If you were to use Pixel Dimensions, after saving that as a Preset or copying it into another chain, those Dimensions would be copied. Conversely, if you were to select Scale Factor, that value would be copied. So, if the final pixel dimensions were not important, but you wanted to resize several different videos all at 200%, then use the Scale Factor.
Aspect Ratio
Another common filter and a couple of small changes to how it is controlled.
The first change is that it is now necessary to select your Aspect Ratio Options at the start. You could use either of the 2 most common ratios. You could instruct the filter to obtain the value from the file’s metadata. Or you could add in your own value.
This is the next change. If you select “User defined”, then the Output Aspect Ratio box will become editable.
You can enter the value as above, or by using the / sign, such as “5/4”. It can also accept a decimal, such as “1.25”.
Finally, it is now necessary to click Apply after making the changes. The filter will not auto-apply.
Frame Averaging
Yet another improvement to a very popular filter. We have improved the performance of filter chains that involve the Frame Averaging filter by recomputing results only when actually needed.
Take a look at the following simple filter chain:
After selecting only the I frames from a video, we have conducted a Frame Averaging process.
The filter has then been disabled. From now on, if the filter is enabled again, the frame-averaged result will not be recomputed.
However, if any of the filters before the Frame Averaging filter are changed, then the filter would detect the change and recompute the result. An example could be changing the Color Range within Video Loader.
Automatic Color Equalization
We have added a new selectable method to apply the filter. “Global” has a much lower computational requirement, meaning that it will process much faster. The speed may come with some loss of high-frequency detail, though.
You may also see that a selection tab has been added. “Global” mode can be used on a selected area, in a similar way to the Histogram Equalization filter.
If the Selection area is changed from the whole image to a user-defined region, the filter will use the values inside that region to calculate the values to be changed in the entire image.
Text Filters
This is a very handy little addition. All filters with a text functionality now have a checkbox for “Relative Font Size”.
This is really useful when copying text filters and macro values to different chains with different resolutions.
Image and Sequence Writer
When you open up these filters for the first time after this update, you will see things a little differently. We have reordered the filter settings to follow a more natural pathway.
Let us look at the Sequence Writer as an example.
- Select the output format
- Select the quality (if supported by the format)
- Enter the first frame number if required
- Enter any leading zeros if required
- Select output folder
- Add to the writing queue if you want to carry on working.
- Hit Apply
We hope this new order helps you.
Sequence Writer
Staying with Sequence Writer for a moment, we have added the ability to write the Image Sequence PDF to a unique location, rather than always next to the Image Sequence directory.
Just hit Browse, and select the location of your choice.
Bookmarks
This is similar to the previous entry. From this update, you will be asked for a location to save the Bookmarks when using the Export Bookmarks option within the Project Menu.
AV1 Decoding
The “dav1d” library has been fully integrated within the FFMS/FFmpeg video engines.
Found inside container formats such as WebM, MKV, and MP4, AV1 has quickly become a very popular codec. With high compression efficiency and royalty-free licensing, its presence within our format support requests has been increasing.
No need for any conversion, all formats using the codec will now be directly decoded.
(Author’s note: I think the library name is rather cool!)
Program Options
This is a handy function for those users who use Batch Convert DVR a lot, or drag and drop several folders of files into FIVE.
At the bottom of the Import tab, you can now enter Excluded Extensions. Log is applied by default, but as you can see from the above, in this example, we have added .vstream, .astream, and .idx.
This now means that if I import a large folder, files with those extensions would be excluded. Therefore, no message reporting their file type would appear.
Other Updates and Changes
Here are some smaller improvements in this release.
- Installer: updated IPP library to 2025.3.0.372.
- Installer: updated Exiftool to version 13.44, and now installed in unpacked form.
- Installer: command-line parameters for installation are now uniform across all products.
- Copy and Verify: removed the Hash Destination operation type since it was redundant.
- Write filters: automatically update the file explorer extension when switching between output formats.
- Quadrilateral tool: improved updating of the visual shape when the tool parameters are changed.
Bug Fixes
Thanks to all the users who have reported bugs. They can be annoying, so if you find one, please reach out to us in support so we can fix it.
- Fixed a bug where an output file is listed even when a report does not include an output file.
- Fixed a crash when switching between filters in History.
- Generate Report: fixed a bug causing the generation of a blank report when user’s Documents folder is located on a network path.
- Convert DVR: fixed a bug that caused the output name specified by the user to be ignored when in concatenate mode.
- Fixed an issue that prevented loading projects containing Link filters when file relocation was needed.
- Fixed a bug in Add Audio Stream that prevented proper syncing when synchronization exceeded 900 frames.
- Copy & Verify: fixed issues with drag and drop of folders in the Destination and Save Log To input parameters.
- Fixed a bug in the Filter Settings panel that caused the histogram to appear grayed out in some situations.
- Fixed a bug that caused information and data from the previous project to be retained in the player panel.
- Fixed an integration issue with Amped Replay, causing an ARP project containing assisted redactions to omit hide annotations when imported into the program.
- FFMS: fixed a bug that could cause wrongly inserted silence when filling audio gaps.
- Fixed a bug that prevented proper synchronization in Add Audio Stream when entering the frame number manually.
- Resolved the issue causing crashes when adding multiple annotations
- Fixed a bug where subtitle streams were not being extracted when stream-copying certain formats.
- Video Mixer: fixed a bug causing synchronization errors.
- Fixed the bug that prevented multiple folders from being loaded and converted simultaneously in FIVE.
- Fixed an issue causing scrubbing errors with variable frame rate videos in the AVI container.
- GUI: fixed a bug distorting the contents of undocked panels.
- Player: fixed a bug causing the waveform to be incorrectly displayed after frame rate changes.
- Fixed a bug causing AV sync errors with MTS and M2TS videos.
- Fixed a changelog entry for Build 36648; it was incorrectly announcing that Video Writer encodes output videos using *limited* color range, but the correct statement is that *full* color range is used.
Don’t Delay – Update Today
If you have an active support plan, you can update straight away by going into the menu About > Check for Updates within Amped FIVE. If you need to renew your SMS plan, please contact us or one of our authorized partners. And remember that you can always manage your license and requests from the Amped Support Portal.
FAQs – Amped FIVE Update 39780
Average FPS calculates a constant frame rate from total frames and stream duration, PTS plays by each frame’s presentation timestamp (best for VFR behavior), and Date/Time uses frame-accurate timing data from the chain (like .time or subtitle timing). If Date/Time is unavailable, add/correct timing with Adjust Timestamp.
In FIVE, VFR can be triaged immediately by checking for uneven frame-marker spacing in the Player bar and reviewing the dynamic FPS value in the Status bar during playback. These UI cues expose timing variability early, helping you diagnose synchronization issues before deeper processing.
First, review the loader warning: FIVE now flags missing data anywhere in the .time file. Then use Adjust Timestamp to interpolate missing values with an appropriate method. Also note: if source data has no milliseconds, FIVE no longer auto-adds .000, preserving original time-data integrity.
The new defaults are tuned for practical forensic reliability: MKV is set for stream copying proprietary CCTV extracts, while MP4 is the default for transcoding workflows. You can still override the container when needed: for example, output to AVI to rebuild a corrupted AVI index.
With Remove Frames/Remove Duplicates, choosing Update duration changes the video length and removes audio to avoid desynchronization. Choosing to retain original duration holds the last frame for the required time, preserving audio. This gives explicit control over timing accuracy versus media continuity.