Free DME & DFIR Resources

When Canonical broke the news recently that Ubuntu 10.10 will include uTouch 1.0, a multitouch and gesture stack, it caused a flurry of excitement about the Linux release's potential for use in tablets.

Full Story

Ocean Systems has announced a new 3-day DVR Assessment & Video Recovery training course that will be hosted by the Tacoma Police Department April 8-10, in Tacoma, Washington. This course is recommended for anyone tasked with the recovery of digital video evidence from CCTV systems.

Read more...

The testing continues today with the Private Messaging (PM) feature that will be made available to all members.  Members will be able to PM each other from any page within the members area, including forum posts.  PM settings will allow each member to be notified of new PM's via email as well, if they'd like; users can be notified of all new PMs, new PMs only when they're offline, or not at all.

Additionally, PM's can be further secured by using an encryption word for each message; you simply enter the encryption word prior to sending the message...and make sure the other party has it or they won't be able to read your PM!

You know what they say – the old has gone, and the new has come. Mozilla has just announced that they will be retiring their Firefox 4 browser – strange, isn’t it, considering Firefox 4 shipped a mere three months ago. Well, at least Firefox 5 is now the de facto browser from Mozilla. Tuesday’s Firefox 5 release also saw Mozilla spell out the list of vulnerabilities it patched in that edition alongside 2010′s Firefox 3.6, although there was no mention of any bugs fixed in Firefox 4.

Full Story

Apple is once again offering the previous version of its professional video-editing software after getting mixed reactions on a newer version.

Full Story

Have you ever worked with somebody who is clearly smarter than everyone else around them? I have, and still do.

View entire post on LinkedIn.

Those who have been recovering video evidence from CCTV systems for any length of time know that every case starts as a research project. In some cases DCCTV evidence is submitted with little or no information about the recording device. In other cases the entire device may be submitted, but more often than not it’s submitted without any manuals or documentation.

If you’re near Vancouver, BC, then stop by the Alibi Room (157 Alexander Street) this Thursday evening (14Nov2013) to visit with several members of the After Effects team.

Full Story

MEDIA COURTOUSE — Tahmir Craig is too short to have been the man who shot and killed a minister’s son in broad daylight last Memorial Day in Chester.

Full story

Understanding video standards is fundamental to aspect ratio correction. Back in the predominantly analog days we had three main standards referenced or used for most video recordings; NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. Then in the early ‘90’s came the first digital multimedia frameworks to reach the average consumer; QuickTime and, shortly thereafter, Video for Windows (VfW).

Today we have dozens of multimedia frameworks, digital video and digital display standards, all of which lead to a great deal of confusion regarding the plethora of acronyms and what they truly mean. AVC or H.264? HEVC or H.265? CIF or SIF? Don’t even get me started on the profiles and parameters available for each standard, as the combinations are truly mindboggling. When it comes to proper Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) though, it really boils down to “Are the originally recorded pixels square or non-square?”

In Steven Levy's classic, sprawling, rapturous ode to the birth of the hacker movement, the book Hackers, Captain Crunch is a bit player--a hacker who took his name from the toy whistle available free in boxes of Captain Crunch When blown into a pay phone, this whistle could be used to make free long distance calls.

Full story:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26111/

Forensic Video Solutions (FVS) is sorry to announce that Larry Compton will be leaving the company as a full-time employee effective October 1/13. The good news is that he is staying close by and will remain an important part of FVS as a consultant on many of our special projects!

If you live in the world of digital forensics, you see hard drives of all form factors and ages (along with plenty of dust bunnies). You also likely wipe and re-purpose hard drives quite regularly. You know more acronyms than your typical teen textaholic, and you went out and celebrated with friends when Serial ATA was released, because you were sickened by the old master/slave relationships associated with IDE/PATA drives. So why do we still see jumpers on SATA drives? Rest assured my friends, it has nothing to do with a master/slave relationship.