Video Evidence Pitfalls

Reading time: 4 minDear friends, welcome! The time has come to say farewell to the Video Evidence Pitfalls blog series! This last post will look back at what we have learned in previous weeks and provide links to all of the 17 posts. We hope that you can use this as a basic knowledge base for future reference […]

Reading time: 5 minDear friends, welcome to this week’s video evidence pitfall post! We often hear about the importance of metadata as a way to reveal more than pixels alone would. It’s certainly true that metadata can give us lots of useful info. However, it must be looked at carefully and prudently, as it hides several pitfalls. Keep […]

Reading time: 4 minDear friends, welcome back! Let me just say it was so nice to meet many of you at the Amped User Days last week, even though virtually. Ok, back to us: welcome to a new chapter of the Video Evidence Pitfalls series! Today we’re dealing with multiplexed videos. We’ll briefly look at different kinds of […]

Reading time: 4 min“Thou shall peer-review your analysis” is one of the well-known (and often ignored) rules of forensic reporting. Sometimes, this important principle gets poorly translated into: “let’s have a colleague peek into my results”. And so, it may happen that an investigator or examiner will ask a colleague for their opinion before submitting the results.

Reading time: 5 minDear friends, welcome to a new video pitfall post! This time we’re dealing with a very sneaky part of video analysis: can we trust what we see? Sometimes, distinguishing the real detail of an object from that of an artifact is not easy. Today’s post will deal with hiding or adding details to the scene. […]

Reading time: 5 minDear friends, welcome to this week’s video evidence pitfall! In this post, we’re focusing on a crucial element of forensic video analysis: timestamps. Timestamps allow us to locate in time what’s shown in a recording, or reference an event to a specific moment in time. Although virtually all surveillance systems do record timestamps, you should […]

Reading time: 5 minDear friends, welcome to another video pitfalls pill! Today’s post concludes our mini-series about using the “best possible evidence.” In the previous weeks, we always assumed you had control from the beginning. Today, we focus on a different yet widespread scenario: you receive the video “evidence” from someone else and are asked to work on […]

Reading time: 6 minDear friends, welcome! Here we are with one more post for the “best possible evidence” mini-series. In the past two weeks, we’ve seen that you should not film the display and that proprietary players often alter the original pixels. Today, we’ll close this mini-series talking about screen capture. We’ll see that, while being much better […]

Reading time: 4 minDear friends, welcome! This week’s post continues the “best possible evidence” mini-series. Last week, we showed why filming the display is not good. This week, we address a related topic: can we trust proprietary players? You’ll be surprised by the number of pitfalls hidden in the bare playback of a surveillance video, so keep reading!

Reading time: 4 minDear friends, welcome to your weekly dose of fear! Starting from today, we’ll be addressing a fundamental issue, perhaps the most important in your video forensic workflow: using the best possible evidence. We’ll dedicate some posts to this important topic, covering the various pitfalls you may encounter. Today, we’ll see why using a mobile phone […]

Reading time: 5 minWelcome to this week’s Video Evidence Pitfalls post, dear friends! Today we’re dealing with the reliability of colors in CCTV footage (and with any kind of digital images in general). Colors are an essential part of human perception, but can often be misleading in surveillance footage. Keep reading to find out why!

Reading time: 5 minDear friends, welcome to our weekly Video Pitfalls post! Last week, we talked about the importance of a video’s time resolution (recording frame rate). Today, we’re dealing with playback speed, which is tightly related and also very important. Keep reading to find out why!