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Today I am honored to report that we made a $2,390 donation to Marshall University's Cyber Forensics & Security program, thanks to the many generous donations we received earlier this year.

Thank you to all of those who donated earlier this year, then re-donated their original donation to support this gift in memory of my dad and brother.  You can view the contribution on Marshall University's Donar Wall.

Keep being great & doing great things, my friends...and have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

I've had a handful of inquiries this week about the frequency of our relatively new automated newsletter, so I thought I'd post a brief note for everyone on the topic.  The automated newsletter sends the five most recent articles and five most recent forum posts out to registered members once per week, once every two weeks or once per month.  Members can change these settings or completely unsubscribe from the newsletter by logging in selecting "Newsletter" from the "Community" menu options.

The automated newsletter was implemented to help keep members abreast of site activity.  Changing your preferences is easy and only needs to be done once.  I hope you find the service helpful. - LC

I know, a little marketing, but this is important. I also get zero for sharing it, as always.

You should definitely read this.

Release date: September 9. 2025

Click the hyper-linked headline below to be taken to the book's official site, where you'll find more info about the book, about Tim, as well as convenient links to purchase on a multitude of platforms.

Happy reading. Cheers, my friends. 😎

Pre-order This Is For Everyone by Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Did you know you can preview your encoding output before writing it to a file with FFmpeg? Just call on your old friend ffplay and use the same encoding options/settings you're considering with FFmpeg. When you do you'll see exactly what the output will look like without having to wait for the entire file to be generated and saved.

Easy peezy lemon squeezy. 😎

It's been three years since we first heard about DARPA's ARGUS-IS, but thanks to a PBS Nova special entitled "Rise of the Drones," we finally have more information about the 1.8-gigapixel camera that is supposedly the highest-resolution surveillance system in the world.

Full story

The Media-Geek site has finally been restored, and I just wanted to take a moment to apologize to everyone for the service interruption we've experienced over the last two days.

All is back to normal now and we have several things in the works for the near future. As always, if you have any suggestions or comments regarding our site and online community, please don't hesitate to post an article, through it in the forums or shoot me a private message to further discuss the issue.

Thanks for participating!

I finished some major updates to the site last night, including upgrading to a newer, faster core database.  I also updated our DCCTV Player Library to include new features, better performance, and better layouts.  In doing the latter I was reminded of Joe Fragomeni's significant contributions to our DCCTV Player Library, and his continued contributions here and elsewhere to the entire multimedia evidence community.

Less than two weeks away from the official launch, and I'm making some significant progress in what will be the new, secure member's area.  This area of Media-Geek.com will not be available to the general public, as its purpose is to provide a secure place for forensic media related professionals to share information.  Membership will be open to current or retired law enforcement forensic media related professionals and prosecutors.

The new members area will provide a number of "social networking" tools, such as secure community forums, file sharing, messaging tools, a community calendar, and more.  Members will be able to submit articles, news, event information, links, and other content to share with the group.  There will be a membership directory, and users can choose what information they'd like to provide (if any).  Members can create "Connections" or "buddy lists" and use Private Messaging (PM) to communicate with any member throughout the entire site. Want to receive an email or PM when there's a new post to a forum?  No problem.  Want an email when someone sends you a PM?  Can do.  Want to keep your email address private, yet allow members to send you an email?  We can do that too!

One thing I really stress when training video evidence Technicians & Analysts is to stay in your lane. Don't go beyond your training & experience levels on any topic/tool/etc., no matter who is asking you to.

A related one is that an expert's job at trial is to leverage their expertise to make sure the Trier of Fact has accurate evidence & information, not to be an advocate for one party or the other.

I've had several students over the years tell me that my passionate articulation of one or the other has saved their case or even their career. Two rather recently.

Honored & proud, of course, but I always like to point out to them that they are the ones that did all the hard work and stood their ground.

Keep being great & doing great things my friends! 😎

Tired of going at it alone, eh WiGig? The aforesaid Alliance has just teamed up with yet another organization -- a mere six months after doing likewise with the Wi-Fi Alliance. For those unaware, WiGig's 60GHz multi-gigabit technology has already begun to penetrate the higher-end AV market, particularly in devices that shoot 1080p from source-to-display sans cabling. But as we've seen, the adoption rate there isn't anything to write home about, and it seems as if the entity is branching out in an effort to broaden its potential profit portfolio. 

Full story:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/03/wigig-and-vesa-team-up-promise-wireless-displayport-gear/

That's a tall order, right?  VLC from VideoLAN.org has become the go-to media player for most, as it can play so many things that Windows Media Player won't, and it's free.  Well, how does it do that, play more than other players?  The Libavformat and Libavcodec libraries, the same ones created by and for the FFmpeg project (and so many other multimedia applications). 

VLC & DirectShow Filters

DirectShow is one of Microsoft's multimedia frameworks, formerly known as ActiveMovie, which replaced Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows framework.  VLC supports DirectShow-based input sources through a module (not very well, IMO, though), but the default Windows version downloaded from VideoLAN cannot reference 32-bit DirectShow filters installed on your Windows PC for audio/video decoding (i.e. filters/codecs registered in your Windows Registry), as the default version downloaded is x64.

As an example, a DCCTV video file exported from a GeoVision system to an AVI file may be using the proprietary GMP4 video codec. In order to play the video, you must install the GeoVision GMP4 codec necessary to decode the primary video stream; this is a DirectShow filter.  DirectShow filters can only be referenced by applications that can leverage DirectShow, which we've established, VLC x64 cannot. 

I was out in the Seattle area Tuesday along with my colleague Ed Baker to provide a couple of free seminars on digital video evidence for members of the Washington Homicide Investigators Association (WHIA).

Many thanks to WHIA for the opportunity and hospitality, as well as to our employer Ocean Systems for their dedication to, and continued support of educating the LE community on the multitude of issues related to digital & multimedia evidence.

I'll be in San Diego for IACP 2016 October 15th through the 18th, one of the LE industry's largest trade shows and educational events.

If you'll be attending, stop by the Ocean Systems booth (#2740) to say hello and see what we've been up to. Hope to see you there!