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By Casey Johnston

A group of researchers have developed a way to identify pirated movies by reducing the original to a signature genetic code. The system can match even videos that have been altered or had their colors changed to the source, an area where many video piracy mechanisms fall short.

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Among the announcements made at today's Google I/O keynote is WebM, a new open-source, royalty-free video format based around the VP8 codec intended for use with HTML5 video. The WebM project's goal is to develop "a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone." The project has the backing of Google, Mozilla, Opera, and numerous other companies. If it catches, on, it could settle the rift that currently exists with HTML5 video support, thus speeding up HTML5 adoption.

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On vacation, but thought I'd comment on this topic before getting on the Harley to go run some errands in the cold Pacific Northwest. As pointed out in someone else's recent blog post, MPEG-4 can leverage what is referred to as a Sample Aspect Ratio (SAR)...not to be confused with Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR) or Signal Aspect Ratio (SAR). It's important to note that in the case of MPEG-4, the Sample Aspect Ratio is the Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR); they are one and the same.

It's also important to note, again, that regarless of any of these numbers, the shape of the samples from an analog source ARE NOT DEFINED BY THE NUMBER OF LINES.

Oh, one more thing...most multimedia NLE and encoding applications provide precise control of all of these settings.  Just an FYI.  All the best my friends.

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!

Another new feature has been added for Media-Geek.com members that I hope will further facilitate information sharing and member communication - the ability to add comments to all articles & newsflashes.  But wait, there's more..not only can you add comments, you can subscribe to comment threads via email or RSS feeds!  Wouldn't it be helpful though if you could also leave comments on files and programs added to our new document library?  Well today's your lucky day, 'cause I had way too much coffee and managed to get that working too.  😲

I've added two links to manage your comments and comment subscriptions, one to the main member menu and one to the quick menu (right-hand side of the page).  This is also where members will manage their favorites.  For each article, file, or program added to the site member's will notice the "Set as Favorite" link located at the bottom of the post; simply click the link to add that item to your favorites list.  A few other notable updates include...

A couple of years ago I did a series of posts on aspect ratio correction of DCCTV recordings; more specifically DCCTV recordings captured by analog CCTV cameras, and correcting Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) for forensic interpretation. I pointed out in my posts and the subsequent Video & Display Standards Chart, that the one exception that I'm aware of where a DCCTV recording captured by an analog CCTV camera shouldn't be displayed 4:3, was the relatively new 960H format.

Intel Monday announced a new line of solid-state drives (SSDs) that are based on the serial ATA (SATA) 3.0 specification, which doubles I/O throughput compared to previous-generation SSDs.

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Adobe has published a security advisory in response to a critical flaw found in Flash Player. The vulnerability affects Flash Player for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, and Android, and also impacts the authplay.dll component included in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader X.

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by Stephen Shankland

Google has begun answering concerns that VP8, the compression technology it hopes will invigorate and liberate Web video, isn't as good as a rival.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20006434-264.html

I recently completed an upgrade of our DCCTV Wiki and wanted to announce some significant changes that I've implemented. First and foremost, the Wiki is no longer a private members-only resource. Effective immediately, I have also migrated DME Resources and the Wiki to a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Previously the Wiki was only available to our over 1,800 verified Professional Community members. Interested parties that do not meet our Professional Community membership requirements are now welcome to participate in the DCCTV Wiki.

by Lance Whitney

Adobe today announced the latest version of its Acrobat suite of products.

Set to hit the market in the next 30 days, the new Reader X and Acrobat X products are promising tighter security, better collaboration, and easier PDF reading.

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The Association for Forensic Multimedia Analysis (AFMA) officially announced the results of their first ever board of directors election. The five members elected to the board of directors were Dorothy Stout, Sam Burgiss, Chuck Pruitt, Laura Teodosio, and Craig Thrane.

Those interested in becoming an AFMA member should send an email with the subject AFMA MEMBER REQUEST to info@theafma.org. After your request is made via email you will receive an invitation to the AFMA member's website.

What do 120Hz, 240Hz, 600Hz really mean for the picture quality of your new HDTV?

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