Free DME & DFIR Resources

As Adobe's Creative Cloud lineup of art and design applications gains prominence on the company's landscape, the quantity and pace of updates to Creative Suite 6 and related subscription-based products is gathering momentum. New features for subscription products and services, in the pipeline throughout the summer, are being prepped for public release over the next few weeks.

Read Full Story

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, whose district includes the heart of Silicon Valley, announces another attempt at a privacy bill that's certain to be opposed by law enforcement organizations.

Full story

Last week I was back in Albany, NY to provide a free seminar on digital video evidence at the New York State Police Academy, followed by Ocean Systems 3-day DVR Assessment & Video Recovery training course. It was a sold-out class comprised of both students new to the field, as well as very seasoned digital and video evidence technicians and analysts. The end result was a really great week of training and peer networking. Many thanks to all of those who attended, and special thanks to the New York State Police (NYSP) for hosting both events!

The NYSP had a new academy class under way as well, with approximately 250 new recruits marching to-and-from the various classrooms within their renovated facilities. It was very cool to see so much activity at the academy again throughout the entire week. Best of luck to all the recruits in training. Hang in there and regardless of the outcome, thanks for stepping up to the plate!

If you have a PSP and aren't using its video playback capabilities other than via UMD, you're missing out on one of its best features. The PSP can basically serve as your personal wide-screen video player, which comes in quite handy for those who travel frequently. A 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo card can hold several hours of good quality video and still have room for your music, pics, etc.

The only problem with this is that the PSP is very finicky with regard to MP4 files. It'll balk on image sizes, frame rates, bit rates, file names, file locations, and just about anything else you can think of. And to top it all off, each firmware release for the PSP seems to handle things differently. But then again, I suppose if it were a simple standard process that remained consistent, Sony wouldn't be able to market and sell software to manage this process for you (a.k.a. PSP Media Manager).

I was hoping I’d be able to wrap this series up with this post, but it’s clear to me now that I won’t be able to. There’s simply too much to cover and I’m certain that at least a few are still scratching your heads (like I was), wondering why we shouldn’t just rely on the pixel matrices to calculate Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) from analog sources. It is critically important to understand that I am approaching this topic from a forensic perspective, with the goal of standardizing the methodology used for forensic processing, interpretation, and presentation.

Adobe recently launched their monthly subscription option in the U.S. for all of the software products, allowing users to pay-as-they-go for access to Adobe software.  The option has been around for Australian users for quite some time, and is now available to those in North America as well...finally!

Learn More

The first module in the very first course published to my new online training library is in the books! The course is on learning to use DME Resources. It will provide a basic overview of DME Resources through five training modules, the first of which is titled "Introduction and Overview". I should warn you, there's a quiz at the end, but I'm giving you two shots at passing it due to the level of complexity. ;)

Navigating & Using DME Resources Training Course

As each day passes law enforcement and government agencies struggle with managing more sources of digital evidence and multimedia, like body worn cameras. The massive amounts of data storage required have led many to finally consider secure cloud-based storage solutions, but as some have found out, despite the minimal capital investment cloud storage costs can quickly exceed the LE & IT budgets of even the largest agencies. Let's break this down and talk specifically about digital evidence and archiving.

How are you archiving all of your digital evidence today? A tiered storage solution? Hybrid cloud solution? LTO tape? Hard drives? Optical discs (i.e. CD-R, DVD+/-R, BD-R)? Lots of questions and options, so lets talk specifically to the last group; those using optical discs.

On Windows 7 and Windows 8 the default skin for Windows Media Player overlays the playback controls on top of the playback window, much like many Flash or HTML5 player skins. If you prefer the classic/corporate skin look, it's still there and only takes a few clicks to get to...you just have to dig a little. Click here for Microsoft's Windows Support post on the topic.

Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference.

The iTwin USB dongle isn’t new: it started life as a easy way to transfer files between two computers without a wire. It looks like two USB drives stuck together at the tail, and its it worked admirably moving files from one computer to another as if there was a hard cable between them. Well, it just added another awesome feature through software, which is real encryption for your Dropbox.

Full Story

Imaging expert Dave Helmly of Adobe will present new applications and discuss next generation possibilities during the "Imaging Supersession" at the upcoming LEVA conference. This LEVA event is the debut forum for CS4!!!!

Here is your chance to learn what is available and what’s on the horizon. You can share ideas in an open forum on imaging procedures and practices.

Click here for more information on the 2008 International Video Evidence Symposium and Training Conference!

George Reis, Media-Geek.com member and well respected digital imaging author/instructor, has posted a brief survey on law enforcement's use of digital asset management systems. George is working on an article pertaining to the topic, which he will make available via his Website www.imagingforensics.com in a few weeks.
Click here to take the brief survey.

If you haven't already, you should check out George's book on using Photoshop CS3 in your forensic workflow...simply click on the image to the right to visit Amazon.com for further details.