AES 46th Conference on Audio Forensics

Dates: June 14-16, 2012 Location: Denver, CO, USA Chair: Jeff M. Smith If you wish to be contacted with conference updates please click here. Authors, the Call for Papers is now available.

Stanley Cup riot video analysis a tiresome task

This just in from the Vancouver Sun: "The young woman with light brown hair sports a delirious grin as she uses a hockey stick wrapped in a Canucks flag to smash the rest of a 15-foot store window, after game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final in June.

More than four months later, her image now sits on the desk of Special Const. Jevon Vaessen as he begins identifying her amid riot video footage which, if screened continuously, would last 208 days.

“It’s lot like searching in, say, a Microsoft document or something,” said Vaessen, one of the Integrated Riot Investigation Team’s four full-time forensic video analysts. “You’re looking for the key words.”

In the search fields of his computer program, he types in his “target’s” upper clothing colour and length (blue and short), lower clothing colour and length (dark and long).

About 20 clips show up with people in frames matching those descriptions.

Vaessen then inputs another search field with the woman’s hair colour (light and long). Ten clips show up.

“It’s like a Google search, you start searching and say, ‘Is this what I need?’” said Vaessen, who is on loan to the VPD from Port Moody police department.

Vaessen will screen each clip until he can obtain an image of the woman from which an investigator can get an identification. Within one frame, analysts could target as many as 10 rioters, identified by red dots.

“There are some clips with so many targets,” Vaessen said. “You’ll see red dots side-by-side-by-side.”

To date, 91 suspects have turned themselves in or been positively identified.

The video searching is made possible by the meta-tags that a team of 60 international forensic video experts at the University of Indianapolis applied to the riot clips over a two-week period in September.

The university’s lab was established in 2007 and houses FBI training courses, but this was the first time an active investigation used the lab. The analysts working on the riot case were paid by their individual law enforcement agencies, but IRIT footed the bill for their room and board.

The analysts amalgamate footage shot from video cameras, smartphones and digital cameras that was in dozens of different formats into a single file type.

Then Vaessen, his fellow IRIT analysts and their American and British counterparts went through each frame and flagged them with meta-tags denoting location and describing the people and events.

These 15,000 different tags include multiple camera angles of the same suspects committing the same crimes.

Some critics say digging for this amount of evidence is overkill and bogging down the riot probe, but lead investigator Insp. Les Yeo said IRIT is legally required to collect all possible evidence before charges are laid.

“We have to follow that procedure,” Yeo said. “If we don’t follow that procedure we’re going to get bad case law, acquittals, not guilty or no charges.

“It’s actually something that is forensic evidence, just like a fingerprint,” Yeo said of the evidence produced from the video analysis. “And, just like DNA, we have to forensically get it in as evidence to the court.”

Yeo said he understands the public’s frustration with the pace of the investigation.

“I totally get it. I, too, am not happy with the fact that it takes this long to get the charges forwarded [to Crown prosecutors],” Yeo said. “However, working within the system and with having worked within the system for 30 years I do know what is required ...”

Continue reading the article by clicking here.

Enjoy.

Cloud computing and criminal justice not compatible?

This just in from Govtech.com: "... Levin said there is one issue outstanding that must be resolved for Google Apps to be fully compliant with the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements for data storage and security. She didn’t divulge publicly what the unresolved problem is.

“The real issue here is the fact that the policies related to a lot of different areas in the government are not matching the technologies that are coming out,” Levin said. “That is the core issue: The criminal justice requirements were never written with cloud computing in mind.”

It’s taken a long time and some interpretation, she said, for all those involved — the city, Google, the FBI and federal government — to figure out how to make Google Apps compliant with the federal government’s security requirements.

In a press statement, CSC said it’s continuing to work with Los Angeles to meet these e-mail requirements. A statement from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s press secretary said the city and Google continue to work together to resolve issues related to new Department of Justice e-mail requirements. “Discussions between the city and Google over specific requirements are ongoing and it would be inappropriate to issue further comment at this time," Villaraigosa’s office said.

Levin added that Google Apps isn’t the only product of its kind that hasn’t yet achieved full CJIS compliance. For example, Microsoft’s Office 365 hosted e-mail solution also fails to meet CJIS requirements, she claimed.

This week’s developments represent the latest curveball in the two-year-old story that has made Levin and the Los Angeles Information Technology Agency a battleground for cloud computing providers that are trying to stake claim to the public-sector market.

In 2009, Google hailed Los Angeles as a trailblazer when officials agreed to move the e-mail and productivity applications of all city employees — including the LAPD — onto Google Apps. Some observers thought the move was bold because it meant that public data would be stored off-site in Google’s data centers. Levin admitted in a later interview with Government Technology that the city didn’t intend to become the first large U.S. city to attempt an enterprise rollout of Google Apps. The city, she said, had misinterpreted the extent of Washington, D.C. government’s earlier implementation of the solution.

Migration of the LAPD’s e-mail system proved problematic from the beginning, as officials from the police department told Levin and the L.A. City Council two years ago that there was concern about storing and securing data with a private company. Levin thought she had assuaged the outcry after receiving assurances that Google Apps would be fully compliant with the FBI and Department of Justice regulations. But progress has been slower than anticipated.

In a press statement Tuesday, Consumer Watchdog said the outcome of L.A.’s contract with Google has “serious implications” outside of Los Angeles for other government agencies that have adopted Google Apps. In a letter of its own addressed to Villaraigosa, the group asked the city to “disclose immediately the extent to which Google has failed to comply” with its contractual obligations. The deal has amounted to “broken promises and missed deadlines,” the group claimed ..."

Read the whole article by clicking here.

Enjoy.

Links of note

For the students in the Intermediate Forensic Photoshop class, here's a few helpful links.

• Stairstep Interpolation - Fred Miranda's SI Pro plug-in can be found here.
• PercepTool 2 can be found here. You can also find George's book there too.
• My book, Forensic Photoshop, can be found here.

Remember, your workflow is your reliable and repeatable pattern of activity. Make sure to document it and stick with it. If you need to change it, make a note of why it changed and when.

Of course, if you need some help, feel free to contact me.

The future of deblur

From the Photoshop blog: "We added Smart Sharpen in CS2, but deblur technology wasn’t mature enough yet for Photoshop and it’s been nagging me ever since. Given the nature of the heavy computation needed, the technology is really dependent on the evolution of the hardware, which provides a more powerful CPU and GPU for us to leverage.”

Challenges with Deblur

However, there is still quite a bit of development left to do before this feature is ready for prime time. Although some of these early demos will wow audiences, there is a lot more to blur than meets the eye. For instance, there are algorithms that estimate where blurs occur in an image and determine what type they are, and others that then reconstruct the image.

The before image [above] has a blur caused by camera shake. The after image shows the type of magic that can occur when the right algorithm is applied using Jue’s new prototype.

The tricky part is when an image has more than one kind of blur, which occurs in most images. Current deblur technology can’t solve for different blur types occurring in different parts of a single image, or on top of one another. For example, if you photograph a person running and also shake the camera when you press the shutter, the runner will be blurry because he is moving and the whole image might have some blur due to the camera shake. If an image has other issues like the noise you often get from camera phones, or if it was taken in low light, the algorithms might identify the wrong parts of an image as blurry, and thus add artifacts in the deblur process that actually make it look worse.

Strong edges in an image help the technology estimate the type of blur. The image below shows the same algorithm run on the image above without the benefit of strong edges. You see that it fails in this case ..."

Click here to read the whole story.

Enjoy.

LEVA 2011 Conference in Coeur d'Alene

I will be teaching the Intermediate Forensic Photoshop classes this week in Coeur d'Alene, Id at the 2011 LEVA conference. The dates are the 18th and 20th. I look forward to seeing y'all there.

Gamut compression

Here's a nice explanation of what happens when you use an old printer in a modern workflow, from Adobe's Jim King: "Since the most notorious color gamut compressions involve reducing the total number of colors that can be represented going back to the original values is usually impossible. What has been lost is lost.

So it is best to delay any steps where gamut compression can occur to avoid reducing the gamut of the data we have. It must be done for output to gamut reduced devices but it is best to reduce your data in this way only in the last step."

In other words, work your workflow. Save your file for discovery. Then target for your old printer and print your exhibits.

Enjoy.

New Tool for Police, the Video Camera, and New Legal Issues to Go With It

From the NY Times: "When a man was fatally shot by a police officer on a street in Oakland, Calif., late last month, the shooting was captured by a video camera.

But the video was not taken by an alert pedestrian with an iPhone. It was recorded by a device clipped onto the police officer’s chest.

The Oakland Police Department is one of hundreds of law enforcement agencies that are trying out the body-mounted video cameras, using them to document arrests, traffic stops and even more significant encounters, like officer-involved shootings.

The cameras, legal experts say, are the latest addition in a world where everyone is increasingly watching everyone else.

The police already record illegal left turns and ignored stop signs using cameras mounted on the dashboards of cruisers — evidence displayed vividly on video screens in courtrooms, sometimes to the chagrin of drivers who have just insisted they did no such thing.

Surveillance cameras watch for shoplifters and potential terrorists. And ever since a bystander recorded Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King in 1991, video has been used by witnesses or suspects to record what they believe to be misconduct or inappropriate behavior by the police — a practice that has proliferated with the advent of smart phones.

The ubiquity of video in police encounters — some of it promptly uploaded onto YouTube — is creating new frontiers for judges and lawmakers, who must sort out the issues raised by the new technologies.

Courts in several states are considering cases where citizens who videotaped the police have been charged with violating wiretapping or eavesdropping statutes, prosecution that civil rights lawyers say violates First Amendment rights ..."

Continue reading this article by clicking here.

Enjoy.

Diving into NVIDIA GPU’s and what they mean for Premiere Pro

From Adobe's Dennis Radeke: "Trying to quantify the GPU in a Premiere Pro for the editing and pro community, it is a big deal. It is something that I’ve wanted to do for some time, but I had no idea how complicated and time consuming this would be!

I went into this endeavor thinking that I would clearly delineate between different Quadro level cards and along the way understand what each one offered in the way of performance. I was methodical in setting up my system and in trying to create real-world tests that would emphasize what the GPU brought to the table.

While I did learn a lot (which I will pass on to you in due course), the experience and tests in some cases were not always as clear-cut as I had expected ..."

Click here to keep reading this article.

Enjoy.

Remembering Steve Jobs

Via John Nack, the Photoshop Team remembers Steve Jobs.

For me, I remember the gift that Woz and Steve gave me and my college crew. The move from the IBM XT to the Mac Classic brought new opportunities and allowed us to graphically realize the products of our imagination ... not to mention earning extra bucks by making party flyers ... Aside from the brief detour that was the G3 (yes, I cursed them for making me learn NT), I've been a Mac guy ever since.

Another battle of the experts leads to a new trial for Wisconsin man

From the State Bar of Wisconsin's Joe Forward: "Brian Avery, convicted on armed robbery charges in the 1990s and sentenced to 30 years in prison, will get a new trial thanks to digital imaging technology not available at the time of his trial, a Wisconsin appeals court has ruled.

In 2007, Avery filed a motion for post-conviction relief based on newly discovered evidence. The new evidence was derived from a new method of digitally enhancing video surveillance, known as Video Image Stabilization and Registration, developed by NASA. It allows examiners to ascertain the height of individuals in surveillance videos, among other things.

A jury saw “grainy” video surveillance tapes of the robberies and pinned Avery on two separate armed robberies, weighing other evidence at trial.

But a digital enhancement, known as a photogrammetric analysis, using the new technology showed the robbery suspect was actually several inches shorter than Avery.

Two experts testified, one for the state and one for the defense, about the precise height of the individual (thought to be Avery) captured on video during one of the robberies. The defense expert testified the suspect could not be six feet, three inches (6’3”) tall, Avery’s height.

The state’s expert testified the suspect appeared shorter, between 5’11” and 6’1 ½", but noted that other variables made it possible the suspect was 6’3”. The circuit court denied Avery’s motion for a new trial after weighing the expert testimony.

A new trial is warranted, Avery argued, because this new evidence, along with other evidence, could place a reasonable doubt in the jury’s mind about his involvement in the robberies. In State v. Avery, 2010AP1952 (Oct. 4, 2011), the District I Court of Appeals agreed.

“By concluding that [the defense expert’s] opinions were ‘not reliable enough’ to entitle Avery to a new trial, the trial court gave one opinion from a credible witness greater weight than a competing opinion from a different credible witness” wrote Judge Joan Kessler. “A trial court applies an incorrect test when it weighs competing credible evidence.”

The trial court should have determined whether there was a reasonable probability that new evidence would create doubt about the defendant’s guilt, the appeals court explained.

“Simply put, if the jury believes the new evidence from Avery’s expert, then it would conclude that Avery could not be the man in the video,” Judge Kessler wrote.

The appeals court also ruled that Avery was entitled to a new trial under Wis. Stat. section 752.35, which gives a court of appeals discretionary reversal authority if the real controversy has not been fully tried. The real controversy, Avery’s involvement, was not fully tried, the court explained, because the jury did not hear the photogrammetric evidence.

The circuit court had ruled that new evidence would not destroy the state’s case against Avery. But the appeals court noted that “[n]o Wisconsin case interpreting [section 752.35] requires that the defendant’s new evidence” totally destroy the prosecutions theory ..."

Click here to read the story on the Wisconsin State Bar's web site. Enjoy.

Hurray for the Chief

You've got to give it up for the Chief of Vancouver's PD. He gets it ...

"The urge to rush to justice is basic and visceral and it is easy to see why many people want speedy arrests for the Vancouver rioters. Despite these external pressures, the Vancouver Police Department-led Integrated Riot Investigation Team will not cut corners and rush cases to court in order to appease those who want fast “justice.”

Many have expressed frustration with the Canadian justice system especially in light of the swift prosecution of the British rioters. But Canadian police and Crown attorneys operate under our laws, not foreign laws. The Integrated Riot Investigation Team (IRIT) and our prosecutors have set out to do the best possible under the current Canadian laws and court precedents. We work within the system as it stands.

The main hurdle we have been dealing with during our investigation is the unprecedented quantity of multi-format video evidence. We received more than 1,600 hours of such video. It would take years to process using conventional methods. We have taken this huge volume of digital evidence to a special lab at the University of Indianapolis, the world’s leader in processing digital evidence. Video experts from around the world will create a single-format video stream. We will be able to catalogue each riot participant and locate each case of vandalism and looting that the person committed. And then we’ll present that evidence to the court ..."

Continue reading this excellent piece by clicking here.

As it turns out, there were more than 5000 hours of video in this complex case. Reflecting back on my role in the IRIT, I was yet again the "Adobe guy." It seems that no one who was present in the opening days of work was proficient in performing batch rename functions on large volumes of data. Being the "Adobe guy," I knew that this task was easy using Adobe Bridge.

There are certainly other tools that could perform the function, but Adobe Bridge makes the job fast and easy. Using Adobe Bridge, I was able to append case and evidence ID information to the file names of the volumes of evidence we received for processing in an afternoon. In this way, those tasked with further processing did not have to perform this task manually, which often leads to mistakes.

I am very grateful to the VPD Chief for his sending a formal commendation and certificate to my chain of command for my work on the IRIT. 

Enjoy.

TWAIN is dead ... long live WIA Support

TWAIN's been dead for a while now. Some folks, just upgrading machines or Photoshop, are finding that the venerable TWAIN interface is gone. What to do?

File>Import>WIA Support is the new TWAIN (well, it's old ... but let's not get that technical).

Here's the scoop from Microsoft:
"Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) enables imaging programs, such as Microsoft Picture It! 2000, Kodak Imaging, or Adobe Photoshop, to communicate with imaging devices such as digital cameras and scanners. WIA supports digital still cameras and both low-end and high-end scanners; it also enables you to retrieve still images from IEEE 1394-based digital video (DV) camcorders and Universal Serial Bus (USB) Web cameras."

Enjoy.

Can You Identify Any of These Suspects?

Wow ... a week in Indianapolis and I need a vacation. What a week it's been. I'm amazed ut and humbled at the talent that LEVA assembled to assist the IRIT and Vancouver's PD. I'm tired ... but I'm so glad that I was a part of it. Many thanks to VPD for their hospitality and to the IRIT for their generosity. Eddie, my row-mate, did some amazing things capturing the un-capturable video. Steve proved that even Newf's can learn to use the text/tagging feature in Avid (though you don't have to like it). U Indy's cafeteria proved that you can have chicken and chips every day for lunch (the gluten free menu).

From the front of the room, to the back, and on both shifts, there was just an absolute display of talent. At the front of the room was the inimitable Grant, conducting the symphony. I don't think that we'd have done it any other way. I'm tired ... but I loved every minute of it. BTW Scott, I got a guy too ...

Enjoy.

A look inside the special forensics lab designed to bring Stanley Cup rioters to justice.

News Hour - Special forensics, part two. John Daly continues an exclusive look inside the special forensics lab designed to bring Stanley Cup rioters to justice.

Read it on Global News: Special forensics, part two - News Hour - Videos | Global BC

Enjoy.

What's at stake in surveillance-law wrangle

From the NZHerald: "The Government's bill to legalise covert state video surveillance is more than just the balancing act between civil liberties and police powers to investigate crime.

It is also about police reputation, good constitutional practice and the law-making powers of Parliament and the Supreme Court.

In a decision known as Hamed, the Supreme Court on September 2 found that covert video surveillance on private property was illegal, even under a search warrant.

Crown Law advice is that all trespassory video surveillance is illegal, and "over the fence" surveillance (filming from a public place, or from private land with the owner's consent) is likely to be illegal too.

Police immediately turned off the video cameras in 13 current operations, and have held off starting 15 operations.

Forty-seven pending trials involving 229 suspects involve evidence gathered by hidden cameras, and these have all been put on hold.

The Security Intelligence Service, Customs and Fisheries are also affected ..."

To continue reading the story, click here.

Enjoy.

An exclusive look at forensics lab tasked with bringing Vancouver rioters to justice

From Global TV BC: "Most of the students at the University of Indianapolis have no idea that investigators from across world have gathered in the basement of the University library to eventually bring Vancouver’s rioting hooligans to justice.

The 1600 hours of riot footage is divided amongst teams of trained forensic analysts who identify suspects and tag their identifying features, so the computer can track them from one crime scene to another.

It is a vast amount of data gathered during the Game 7 riot, and there is only one place in the world that can handle it all.

Global got an exclusive look inside the unique lab, where they say the magnitude of the VPD investigation is unparalleled.

The lab consists of forty of the best analysts from Great Britain, Florida, Chicago, and L.A. [ed. note, I can't confirm/deny that the analyst from Los Angeles was me.] as well as Vancouver, trying to identify rioters so they can be charged and convicted.

“It is a challenge. It is also an incredible learning experience for us,” says Michael Plaxton with Durham Ontario Regional Police who is working on the project. “There is a lot of information that we can take back with us to our own departments, so if we have to do the same thing that Vancouver has to deal with, we’d be prepared.”

The LEVA, or law enforcement video analysis lab, is a prized asset for the university.

“We donated the space, and of course they have all of this high tech, incredible equipment and I understand that this is the only place like it in the world, which is wonderful for us,” says Patricia A. Jefferson, Associate Provost at the University of Indianapolis.

The lab was set up a few years ago to deal with big events like terrorist bombings that typically generate large amounts of video ..."

Read it on Global News: An exclusive look at forensics lab tasked with bringing Vancouver rioters to justice.

Enjoy.

Warrants being issued to get more riot evidence from media

From News1130.com: "Think you got away with some the damage and destruction caused during the riot in June? Think again!

That's the message from Vancouver Police, who say forensic analysts are in Indianapolis right now processing over 1,600 hours worth of video evidence with a ton of images of rioters that have yet to be identified.

The VPD are just now getting court orders for raw media footage of the riot. Inspector Les Yeo says it's important to get the raw, unedited accounts.

As for why this wasn't done in the first week or two after the riot he says, "Any kind of a judicial process is extremely complicated. This warrant is over 100 pages long. It's very complicated to write. We must ensure it withstands any kind of scrutiny from the courts."

Yeo says police are still on track to recommend 40 charges by the end of next month. They eventually hope to see hundreds of participants charged ...

Click here to read the story.

Enjoy.

VIDEO: NHL riot footage examined in U.S.

More than 1,500 hours of video from the June Vancouver riot are being analyzed in the U.S. to link faces to crimes, the CBC's Kirk Williams reports.

Now I can't confirm or deny any involvement, but someone who fits my description can be seen at 1:11 of the video ...

Enjoy.

California bill would ban warrantless cell phone searches

This just in from CNN: "If you get arrested in California, the photos, e-mails and other personal data on your cell phone soon could be a bit safer from prying police eyes soon. A bill passed by the state legislature would require law-enforcement officers to obtain a warrant before searching the cell phone of a person placed under arrest.

If signed by the governor, the bill would override a January ruling by the California Supreme Court. According to California Sen. Mark Leno, who sponsored the legislation, this ruling had "legalized the warrantless search of cell phones during an arrest, regardless of whether the information on the phone is relevant to the arrest or if criminal charges are ever filed."

The new California law unanimously passed in the state Assembly. Gov. Jerry Brown has until October 9 to sign it into law, according to a spokesman from the governor's office.

Under this legislation, California law enforcement officers would have to first obtain a search warrant when there is probable cause to believe a suspect's portable electronic device contains evidence of a crime.

The Peace Officers Research Association of California, which opposed the bill, argued: "Restricting the authority of a peace officer to search an arrestee unduly restricts their ability to apply the law, fight crime, discover evidence valuable to an investigation and protect the citizens of California."

The California legislature disagreed, finding that "once in the exclusive control of the police, cellular telephones do not ordinarily pose a threat to officer safety." Furthermore, lawmakers found that existing practices -- including confiscating the phone (without searching it) or promptly applying to a judge for a search warrant -- alleviate concerns about destruction of evidence ..."

Click here to read the whole article.

Enjoy.

Adobe Elements family

A few days ago, Adobe announced an update to their Elements family of products. They're at version 10 with Elements (Premiere and Photoshop).

During these trying economic times, I'm sure that agencies will be tempted to short-change themselves and buy the Elements versions over their more expensive cousins. I'd hope that cooler heads will prevail and folks will look long term.

Part of validating a tool is to see what others in the industry are doing. Is the tool generally accepted in the field? Do a good amount of your peers use the product? Unfortunately for the Elements family, the answers are no and no. Do you really want to risk your case by using something that wasn't meant for our industry?

Elements is good for folks new to photo and video editing. It's handy links to social networking sites are perfect for your family photos and the kids' softball games. Unfortunately for our budgets, it's not a law enforcement product.

Enjoy.

Webinar: Decoding Digital Evidence: What Every Law Enforcement Officer Must Know

Information relayed on behalf of LEVA which supports this FBI RCFL training opportunity:

As part of its Continuing Education Series, the FBI's Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (RCFL) Program is offering a free Webinar to members of law enforcement and government agencies. During this two-hour live event, participants will hear from the FBI's top experts about-

• Current trends in digital forensics including the types of investigations RCFL personnel most frequently support, including crimes against children. 
• Utilizing the power of social media during criminal investigations to generate leads, with a special focus on crimes against children. 
• Best practices for handling smartphones, tablets, e.g. iPads, audio/video surveillance, and more.
• Major legal considerations surrounding digital evidence 

Participants may request certificates of completion after the event. This free webinar is for Law Enforcement, Government Personnel and Infragard Members ONLY. Register for the event by clicking here.

Enjoy.

ToughTech Duo review

At DSI-Vegas, I introduced a new piece of gear to the folks in my Premiere Pro class, the ToughTech Duo. Many were curious as to how I was processing a live camera feed into OnLocation, as well as processing video in Premiere Pro CS5.5 for the class (on a laptop) ... all without missing a beat (or dropping a frame).

Sitting next to my MacBook Pro was small silver box, the ToughTech Duo from CRU-DataPort. This small RAID box was connected to my MacBook Pro via the Firewire 800 port.

CRU-DataPort sent the unit out for me to look at. I was impressed with the design; compact, clean, with an easy to understand LCD menu screen. Add to this the quad connectivity options of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA. It will do RAID 0 or 1. For the class, I wanted performance. I chose to set it up for RAID 0.

Powering the drives is easy. Most FireWire ports have adequate power to operate ToughTech Duo, maximizing portability. The ToughTech Duo can also supply power over a FireWire cable whilst allowing a data connection over the faster eSATA port. An AC power supply is also included, along with plugs for US, European, UK, and Australian wall connections.

As much time as I spend in the field, it's nice to know that there's a product out there that can meet my demanding expectations. Now, I can bring along the ToughTech Duo. At only 4lbs, I hardly notice that it's in my kit. OnLocation records at about 13GB/hour. With the 1.5TB model, I can record for days on end - which is great for both forensic video applications as well as surveillance operations.

I like the ToughTech Duo a lot. I can't recommend it highly enough. I think that you will like it too. At around $750 for the 1.5TB model, you really can't go wrong.

Enjoy.

What happened to Clip Notes?

I received a note the other day asking about what happened to the Clip Notes feature in Premiere Pro CS5.

The Clip Notes feature is not included in After Effects CS5 or Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. However, you can use CS Review in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 to create reviews of movies made in After Effects or Adobe Premiere Pro.

What's CS Review? According to Adobe, CS Review is an online service in that lets you share your design content on the web so that others can provide feedback. The CS Review panel lets you create reviews and upload content to the Acrobat.com server. The CS Review panel is available in the CS5 and CS5.5 versions of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Adobe Premiere Pro.

When you upload content, a snapshot image of your content is uploaded to a personal or shared workspace on the Acrobat.com server, where participants can add comments. (If you are working from Adobe Premiere Pro, you actually upload the entire video sequence for commenting.) You and others can view the comments in the web browser and in the CS Review panel of the Creative Suite application. You can continue to add and remove snapshots of your design content, making the review dynamic.

CS Review is part of the CS Live subscription service. A CS Live subscription is required for creating and managing reviews from Creative Suite applications. However, review participants are not required to have a CS Live subscription to view and comment on reviews. Reviewers need only a free Acrobat.com account. For more information on CS Live subscriptions, see www.adobe.com/go/cslive. As always, make sure that your agency or institution supports your use of these services. Not all agencies approve of "cloud based" services. Also, make sure that you understand how this service works with your discovery process.

Enjoy.

Validation?

We were having a discussion on the show floor at HTCIA recently. HTCIA is all about computer forensics and the things that are on the periphery of that discipline ... like cell phone forensics.

The topic of validation came up in relation to the various cell phone forensic tools that were being sold that week. How does one validate the cell phone forensic tools? How does one even choose which tools to buy? Can you believe the marketing hype from the vendors? The answer, as always ... it depends.

One of the people present gave the following example. They received a particular handset for examination in a criminal case. The court requested all text/sms messages be retrieved and made available for the court. The examiner took the phone off the network and browsed to the messages. The phone's display noted that there were 270 messages in the phone. The examiner had Secure View from DataPilot. Secure View is relatively inexpensive. It was the only tool that this examiner had as he was new to forensics and his small agency didn't have a lot of money. Problem? The handset wasn't supported by Secure View. Take a look at their site. More often than not, they don't support the retrieval of sms messages.

The problem is compounded by the fact that there isn't a single vendor that gets all phones. Most products are expensive in terms of buying the hardware and getting training on how to use it correctly. Cellebrite's UFED Physical Pro can run almost $10k. The Standard version is cheaper, and many people opt for it out of budgetary concerns. Cellebrite says that it gets so many thousand handsets, but do they really? They count in their list of supported handsets ones in which they only retrieve the phone book and call history.

If you are ordered by the court to retrieve all sms messages, what do you return? Just those visible? Visible and deleted? How do you interpret all sms messages? What if your tool doesn't support the handset? What if your tool doesn't support the retrieval of deleted files from that handset? What do you do? Are you ethically bound to recuse yourself do to the lack of appropriate tools?

Can you consider your tool valid if it only retrieves data from certain handsets? Is it therefore valid if it retrieves some things, but not everything? As an example, Secure View does not support the retrieval of sms messages from any HTC phone. It'll get other things from HTC phones, but not sms messages. Is it a valid tool for use with HTC phones?

Enter Crawford and Brady. You get an order to retrieve sms messages from a handset. Your tools don't support that particular handset. Does your attorney goes to trial not knowing what's in those messages? The other side employs an expert with tools that do support the retrieval of all sms messages from the handset. Are you and your attorney comfortable with this scenario? What about a scenario where your tool gets most, but not all messages. Your visual inspection shows 270 messages. Your tool retrieves 249 messages. Where'd the other messages go? Try as you might, you can't get to the other messages in your retrieval. What do you do? Is your process valid?

Crawford says that you get to be questioned. Brady says that the answers to those questions get to follow you around for the rest of your career. Given this, are you comfortable with your tools and your procedures? If you are not, do you have the institutional support to make necessary changes? What happens to you if you don't/can't? Will expediency rule, or will science win out? The answers from the HTCIA show floor might surprise you.

Expediency?

--- Begin editorial ---

I was recently contacted by someone who needed me to work on a case involving video based evidence. I examined the evidence briefly and told them that it would take about a week to set up the experiments, test/validate the results, and return a report. His answer, "can it be done quicker? I don't care about the other stuff. I just need to get something that I can use and get it out to the media."

My answer was simple. I turned down the job. I tried to explain to the customer that I'd either do it the right way, or not at all - that justice demands the process be followed and that expediency has no place in science.

Expediency? Expediency is a regard for what is politic or advantageous rather than for what is right or just. "I'm just trying to get this done ..." "Quick and dirty." "It's not for court, it's for the media ..."

If the multimedia evidence will be used to help identify a suspect, either through a BOLO flyer, a media alert, or bill boards and bus benches ... is it really "not for court?"

What if "quick and dirty" gets it wrong? What if, in "just trying to get something done," your freeware tools or shoddy processes ignore aspect, colour and light, drop frames, etc. In the process, you get the shape of the face wrong, the skin or clothing colour wrong ... and someone identifies the wrong person. What if your "quick and dirty" wastes time and resources as investigators look in the wrong direction?

What's our responsibility to the Trier of Fact to get it right, from start to finish? Is it possible to be both fast and accurate? I would argue that it is ... provided that the technician has the appropriate training and equipment.

Is it ethical to base your workflow or business processes on expediency? I've received a number of e-mails asking about speeding up processes because of mandatory filing deadlines. Essentially what's being said is that the analyst isn't being given the proper amount of time because a suspect is in custody and the investigator needs to get the case filed. Ouch.

What about expediency in terms of assignment of personnel? Is it ethical to place an employee into a position for which he/she does not have appropriate training and experience? These are all questions facing supervisors as budgets shrink. What's the appropriate response? Is the NAS report right in that lab functions should be privatized, separated from governmental agencies?

With the Crawford doctrine taking hold and defendants exercising their right to question everyone, attorneys are digging into the training and expertise of technicians who are involved in the prosecution's case. Given Brady, would a technician necessarily want to harm his/her career by being on the losing end of a thorough cross examination - being found unqualified to provide testimony? What role do managers play in preventing this from happening? In other words, if you know that your people are not as qualified as they should be, and you know attorneys are using Crawford (6th Ammendment) to call everyone related to the case, why would you entertain expediency? In "just getting things done," you may be ending the careers of your people and ultimately harming your case.

This is just an editorial on my part. Now that budgets are shrinking, I've been getting so many e-mails on the subject of "getting things done" that I had to say something. I'm not speaking about any one agency or firm - just collectively about the practice of expediency. Expediency has no place in the justice system, in my humble opinion.

Premiere Pro Training Curriculum

For the first time, Adobe is offering Adobe Premiere Pro Official Training Curriculum. The Official Training Curriculum offers students entering the industry or seasoned professionals the necessary skillset to use Adobe Premiere Pro for their editing needs. The goal of the Adobe Premiere Pro Official Training Curriculum is to ensure quality, consistency and accessibility of Adobe Premiere Pro training worldwide.

There are two types of courses that Adobe makes available to you:

An Introduction to Adobe Premiere Pro (101)
This entry-level course teaches students to perform essential editing techniques while becoming familiar with the Adobe Premiere Pro user interface. This class is designed for anyone looking to edit professional-quality video with Adobe Premiere Pro and uses hands-on and interactive instruction to best explore its functionality. The course is designed for new users who have no substantial editing experience.

Adobe Premiere Pro for Experienced Editors (250)
This course teaches experienced editors how to navigate Adobe Premiere Pro and helps give them insights on how to use Adobe Premiere Pro within the Creative Suite Production Premium workflow. This class is designed for students who are making the transition to Adobe Premiere Pro from another nonlinear editing platform.

If you wish to order this bundle as well as classroom materials, visit the Peachpit Press website to order: http://www.peachpit.com/premieretraining

Enjoy.

Working with Photoshop Layer Comps in Adobe Captivate

Captivate just keeps getting better. So much has changed with Adobe Captivate since I used it to create the videos for my book. Here's an exciting addition: "In Adobe Photoshop, you can work with different types of layers like adjustment layers, mask layers, and layer comps. Layer comps allow you to create, manage, and view multiple versions of a layout in a single Photoshop file. This feature comes in really handy when you are creating screen layouts for your eLearning courses. You can save all your course screens as different layer comps and then use it in your Adobe Captivate courses.

Let’s see in this demonstration how to create layer comps and import these layer comps in Adobe Captivate.

Click here to watch the video. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Use one mouse/keyboard on multiple PCs

From ZDnet: "Do you work with multiple PC? Is your desktop cluttered with more than one keyboard and/or mouse? If this describes you then you need Mouse without Borders.

Mouse without Borders is a Microsoft Garage project that allows you to work with numerous PCs as though they were a single system.

Note: What is the Microsoft Garage? Here’s how Microsoft describes it:

“The Garage is both a physical space in Building 4 at our Redmond HQ, and a company wide program that encourages grass roots invention, tinkering, ideas and incubation of projects. In The Garage, employees get together after hours to build whatever they dream up and the results are often impressive. 99.9% of the Garage projects either ship as part of a Microsoft project or remain internal, but every once in a while there’s a project that doesn’t fit into any existing Microsoft product which will get a lot of request from employees who want to be able to share it with their friends and families. In exceptions like this, the Garage community will rally together to and publish it as a standalone public download.”

Using Mouse without Borders, you can control up to four PCs with a single keyboard and mouse with no extra hardware needed - it’s all done over the network. In addition to using the same keyboard and mouse on multiple PCs, you can also move files between PCs by dragging and dropping, copy and paste across systems, easily share screen captures and even log in or lock multiple PCs simultaneously.

Very neat.

Mouse without Borders has been developed by Truong Do who, by day, is a developer for Microsoft Dynamics.

Download here [1.1MB]."

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Adobe acquires IRIDAS

Adobe announced at the IBC 2011 Conference and Exhibition that it has acquired certain assets of privately held IRIDAS, a leader in high-performance tools for digital color grading and enhancement of professional film and video content, including stereoscopic technology. Color grading is an essential component of finalizing professional film and television content and is becoming an increasingly important part of modern content creation with the advent and rapid growth of High Dynamic Range (HDR) video.

The addition of IRIDAS technology includes SpeedGrade, an award-winning toolset for Stereo 3D, RAW processing, color grading and finishing of digital content. IRIDAS offers the only non-destructive tools for primary and secondary color correction that are optimized for multi-core CPU and GPU performance, paralleling the industry-leading speed and efficiency of the Adobe Premiere® Pro and Adobe Mercury Playback Engine software.

Click here to read the whole press release.

Enjoy.

Fingerprints and video evidence lead to the arrest

This just in from WANE.com: "Warsaw police said fingerprints and video evidence lead to the arrest in the June 2010 burglary of an AutoZone store on East Center Street.

According to the Warsaw Police Department, Keith J. Vuittonet, 35, was arrested for Burglary at a mobile home in the Whispering Pines Trailer Court, north of Warsaw Friday afternoon.

Police believe Vuittonet entered the business through the roof on June 10, 2010, based on fingerprint and video evidence at the scene.

Vuittonet is also charged with Residential Entry in the home burglary in the Pierceton area.

Police also said Vuittonet had traveled to Texas shortly after the incidents and recently returned to the area.

He was booked into the Kosciusko County Jail and held o a $20,000 bond."

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Adobe Carousel

This just in from Adobe: "During the Photoshop World 2011 keynote, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced Adobe® Carousel™ for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and Mac OS. Adobe Carousel is designed for anyone who loves photographs, takes a lot of them, and needs a simple way to view, browse, adjust and share them without worrying about manual syncing or storage. Adobe Carousel uses the powerful photo-processing technology that is used in Adobe Photoshop® Lightroom®, so customers get the finest photo-editing results delivered consistently no matter what the device. Photos look great and are easy to share directly with family and friends.

Adobe Carousel is comprised of a set of client apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Mac OS desktops (versions for Windows and other devices are expected in the first half of 2012). When customers import their photo library into Adobe Carousel, or take new photos using Adobe Carousel on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, those photos are automatically accessible on any supported device through the cloud-based smart mesh technology incorporated in Adobe Carousel. Once imported, any edits, deletions or additions to the library made on one device are automatically updated across all devices linked with the account. With Adobe Carousel, manual syncing and device storage limitations are a thing of the past.

Setting up Adobe Carousel is easy. Customers will just download the apps, set up a subscription plan on their iPhone and iPad, and they are ready to go. Subscribers can import a virtually unlimited number of JPEG files, and install Adobe Carousel apps on as many of their compatible devices as they want.

“With Adobe Carousel we are extending the power of Adobe’s imaging expertise beyond the desktop and onto tablets and smartphones, delivering instant access to your complete photo library and the freedom to edit and share photos anywhere, any time,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president of Digital Imaging Products, Adobe. “Thanks to Adobe Carousel, users never need to worry about wasting time syncing, remembering if a photo was saved to a particular device, or worrying about maxing out storage on their iPhone or iPad.”

Familiar multi-touch gestures provide a fun and interactive experience to explore tens of thousands of photos quickly and easily, and Adobe’s powerful photo-processing engine lets users adjust exposure, shadows, highlights, white balance, vibrance, clarity and contrast. There are also over a dozen “Looks” that allow customers to quickly experiment with the appearance of a photo. Adobe Carousel simplifies and enhances photo sharing by allowing subscribers to invite friends and family members to collaborate on a photo library free of charge – so anyone with a Carousel capable device can view existing photos and contribute new ones, apply adjustments and Looks to images, and easily grab and flag favorite photos. Users can also share photos by sending them directly to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr or via email.

Pricing and Availability
The Adobe Carousel apps will be available through the iTunes App Store and for Mac later this month. Through Jan. 31, 2012, Adobe plans to offer Adobe Carousel for a special introductory price of US$59.99/year or US$5.99/month. Anyone subscribing at that price will be able to renew at that same price for an additional two years. At the conclusion of the introductory offer, Adobe Carousel will be US$99.99/year or US$9.99/month. By subscribing, customers automatically receive any enhancements and updates to Adobe Carousel at no additional charge. Customers receive a complimentary subscription for up to 30 days and can purchase a monthly or yearly subscription at any time from their iPad or iPhone.

Customers can download and install the Adobe Carousel apps as many times and across as many devices as they want as a part of their subscription (no additional fees apply). For more information, including system requirements, visit www.photoshop.com/carousel

I'm thinking that this is more of a personal type app - and not necessarily for LE use ... at least that's how I'm planning on using it. On the other hand, it could help for court prep, depositions, and other cases where you might need instant access to your images.

Enjoy.

2011 HTCIA International Training Conference & Expo

I'll be at the HTCIA Conference next week in Indian Wells, Ca, talking about Cell Phones. My partner, Eric Wahlberg (scarry good at getting evidence out of cell phones), will be hosting a class on using FinalMobile to script evidence retrieval.

If you're planning on being there, stop by and say hello.

Enjoy.

Changes to Rule 26

From the BullsEye Blog: "On Dec. 1, 2010, a major change took effect in the federal rule governing expert witness reports, giving draft reports the protection of the work-product doctrine and exempting them from mandatory disclosure. At the time, attorneys and experts hailed the change as a long-overdue step that would reduce both the cost and contentiousness of litigation.

Now, having had six months to live with the new rule, the assessment of many attorneys and experts remains favorable but somewhat muted. While there is general agreement that the change was for the better and has simplified the process to a degree, most attorneys and experts report that the actual impact on their practices has been negligible.

“It has simplified the report process and removed some of the archaic hurdles in the process,” says David Donoghue, a partner at Holland & Knight in Chicago. “But I do not think it has simplified expert discovery overall because many are still testing and litigating the boundaries of the new rule, particularly what information is in fact discoverable.”

The Dec. 1 revision of Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure changed what had been the practice ever since the rule’s last major revision in 1993. No longer does the rule require full discovery of draft expert reports and broad disclosure of any communications between an expert and trial counsel.

Instead, those communications now come under the protection of the work-product doctrine, prohibiting discovery of draft expert reports and limiting discovery of attorney-expert communications. Still allowed is full discovery of the expert’s opinions and of the facts or data used to support them ..."

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Budget Cuts Slash Expert Funds

This just in from the BullsEye Blog: "Despite seeing the first signs of an improving economy, both the legal industry and governmental agencies are still experiencing a budget crunch. Changing fee structures at law firms and debates over the federal budget have left both groups with limited funds to locate and retain experts.

In the last few months most government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, have been forced to defend their very expensive price tags. SEC Chairwoman, Mary Shapiro, told Senate Banking Committee members that budget cuts have caused reductions in personnel, technology and litigation expenses, including the amount spent on expert witnesses. Although funds may be limited, locating the best experts is still vital to a successful case. When equally qualified experts present opposing facts to the court, the most persuasive and best credentialed experts often carry the most weight with juries.

These experts not only look impressive on paper, but also have the intangible ability to communicate with judges and juries. Unfortunately, many of these experts appear at first to be unobtainable to those with lesser litigation budgets because of larger fee structures.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Adobe CreatePDF for iOS

Yesterday Adobe released Adobe CreatePDF as an app for iOS devices, such as iPhones and iPads. This app will enable you to open any Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Image, Text, or RTF files as a PDF on your iOS device. Just use the ‘Open in’ to send your files to the CreatePDF application.

Click here to read the whole article and watch the video. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Expert Reports: Should Lawyers Keep Hands Off?

From the BullsEye Newsletter: "Hands off or hands on? That is the question for litigators and experts alike as to the lawyer's role in writing the expert's report.

The answers lawyers give to that question are anything but black-and-white. Rather, many trial lawyers see their role in the report as a matter of nuance, finessed through experience. Whereas the expert is skilled in a subject, they say, the lawyer is skilled in storytelling. The lawyer's job is to ensure that the expert's report conveys both the subject and the story.

"It is an art, I want to stress," says Michael J. Abernathy, chair of the Intellectual Property Department at Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, Chicago. "You have to be involved in this without crossing the line in terms of improperly molding the expert's opinion."

Federal courts require a written expert report pursuant to Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. State court rules vary in their requirements for a report. Rule 26 explicitly states that the report is to be "prepared and signed by the witness."

But does Rule 26 mean the lawyer must give the expert carte blanche in writing the report? Lawyers generally agree it does not, but they do not necessarily agree on the appropriate degree of their involvement. The danger of a lawyer's over-involvement is that it opens the report to impeachment.

"I would rather have a very objective report with minimal attorney input than a report which is overly managed by counsel," says Russell Boltwood, vice president of licensing and intellectual property at UTStarcom Inc. in Alameda, Calif. "Ultimately, a report which is heavily managed by attorneys for content will not likely withstand good impeachment by opposing counsel's experts."

At the same time, under-involvement is equally risky, exposing a lawyer to loss of control of the evidence needed to make the case. Andrew R. McGaan, a litigator with Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago, recalls his fear as a young lawyer of being too hands-on with an expert and how a mentor changed his view.

"A senior lawyer at my firm once said to me: Would you rather have it come out that you played a role in the opinion or would you rather have come out an opinion in which you played no role?"

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

When experts disagree

Another cautionary tale from IMS Expert Services: "t happens all the time between opposing experts in litigation. One side brings on an expert to look for holes in the work of the expert on the other side.

But what happens when one expert exposes another expert's work as flawed – and both experts are working for you?

What if your own expert comes to you and questions the methods or conclusions of another of your experts?

Perhaps you retained one expert as a consultant to conduct initial reviews and lay the groundwork for your case. Later, you retained a second expert in the same field to testify.

You present the consulting expert's work to the testifying expert as background to be used in formulating his own opinion. The testifying expert looks at the earlier work and proclaims, "I can't use this. The analysis is flawed because of X, Y and Z."

At this point, there is no option of sweeping the issue under the rug. Had the consulting expert's work remained just that, it would not have been discoverable under the federal rules. But once it was provided to the testifying expert, it became fair game.

That means that your opponent is likely both to learn about the consulting expert's work and also to learn of the testifying expert's condemnation of it.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Mouse scroll wheel behaviour in Premiere Pro

This just in from Adobe's Kevin Monahan: "The scroll wheel on the mouse can be useful to speeding up workflow in Premiere Pro, that is, if you know how to use it. This is especially true if you are switching to Premiere Pro from another application. For example, Final Cut Pro editors are used to using the scroll wheel to move the timeline vertically to see more tracks. In Premiere Pro, the scroll wheel moves the timeline horizontally. This may seem disorienting at first, but you should know that you can use the mouse to scroll vertically. To do this, hover the pointer over the scroll bars in the timeline, then use the scroll wheel on the mouse to move the timeline vertically.

The scroll wheel has an additional function, and that is zooming in and out of the timeline. Sure you can type the = and – keys to zoom into and out of the timeline, but if you hold down ALT (Windows) or Option (Mac OS), and scroll with your mouse you can zoom in and out that way. Scrolling down with the modifier key enabled zooms out of the timeline while scrolling up zooms in.

Just a couple of tips for your scroll wheel that should save you time as you manipulate the timeline in Premiere Pro."

Enjoy.

Free sample chapters and videos from An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro

From Adobe" Todd Kopriva: "Peachpit Press recently released An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro, by Robbie Carman, Jeff Greenberg, and Richard Harrington.

This book is an excellent resource for experienced editors to learn Adobe Premiere Pro. It begins from an assumption that you already know about video editing in general and only need to learn the details of the features and workflows specific to Adobe Premiere Pro and its companion applications.

You don’t need to take my word for it, though. The fine folks at Peachpit Press have made four chapters available as free samples: three as PDF documents and one as an HTML document ..."

Click here to read the whole article and access the sample material. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

LEVA Announces Activation of Forensic Video Analysis Response Team

In support of LEVA member agency the Vancouver Police Department and the Integrated Riot Investigation Team (IRIT), LEVA announces the activation of the Forensic Video Analysis Response Team.

IRIT investigators are innundated with over 1600 hours of video depicting criminal acts that took place immediately following this summer's Stanely Cup hockey finals, including arson, looting, and serious assaults.

Between September 26th and October 9th over 40 LEVA Forensic Video Analysts will converge on the National Digital Multimedia Evidence Processing Lab at the University of Indianapolis to undertake the mass processing of DME.

Enjoy.

Picture Package is dead? Long live Picture Package.

Many miss the old Picture Package feature from Photoshop CS3 and earlier. But did you know there are several ways to create packages in current Adobe apps?

Photoshop legend Michael Salinero provides several options, including a clever technique that uses Smart Objects to create flexible package layouts.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Need every nth frame of a video?

One of the questions that came up in yesterday's class was how to get every nth frame of a video. Why would you want to do that? Multiplexed video. If you only want one camera view and that view shows up in the video stream on a regular interval, you should be able to say to your software ... "give me every nth frame."

So, how do you do it? It turns out that Amped Five does it really well.

Once you load the range selector, just input the interval.

It's really that easy.

This handy feature is one of the reasons that I am liking Amped Five more and more.

Enjoy.

Expert’s Exclusion Upheld by 10th Circuit

From the BullsEye blog: "In what proved to be a dramatic turn of events for the plaintiff in a products liability suit against pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this month that a trial judge’s ruling to allow expert testimony is not final and may be reversed by a second trial judge who takes over the case.

The 10th Circuit refused to accept the plaintiff’s argument that the “law of the case” legal doctrine should preclude the second trial judge from revisiting the first judge’s ruling. The court said it would not apply the doctrine to rulings revisited prior to entry of final judgment, reasoning that judges generally remain free to reconsider their earlier interlocutory orders. This holds true even when a case is reassigned from one judge to another, the circuit panel said.

The underlying lawsuit arose out of truly tragic circumstances. Plaintiff Mark Rimbert alleged that Eli Lilly’s anti-depression medication Prozac caused his father to kill his wife and himself. Rimbert’s father committed the murder-suicide shortly after he was diagnosed with moderate depression and started taking the drug.

After the parties concluded discovery, Eli Lilly filed motions for summary judgment on various grounds and a motion to exclude the testimony of Rimbert’s expert witness on causation under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). After conducting a Daubert hearing, the judge denied the motion to exclude the expert.

Later, the judge made a disclosure “of a personal nature” to the parties in the case. Although he did not believe the circumstances required him to recuse himself, he offered to have the case reassigned if any party was uncomfortable with his continued participation. Eli Lilly took him up on that offer and the case was reassigned to a new judge.

As soon as the new judge took over the case, Eli Lilly renewed its previous motions. Relying on the transcript of the first judge’s Daubert hearing and the evidence presented there, the second judge reversed the first judge’s ruling and granted Eli Lilly’s motion to exclude the testimony of Rimbert’s causation expert. He also refused to give Rimbert more time to find a new expert. Leaving Rimbert with no evidence of causation, the second judge granted summary judgment in favor of Eli Lilly.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Comments Sought on Police Vehicle Camera Standards

The U.S. government is seeking comment on the latest version of its proposed standards for police vehicle audio and video equipment.

On Aug. 22, 2011, the Department of Justice (DoJ) posted a Federal Register notice, “Vehicular Digital Multimedia Evidence Recording System (VDMERS) Standard, Certification Program Requirements, and Selection and Application Guide,” announcing that the DoJ, the Office of Justice Programs, and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) have made available to the general public three draft documents related to VDMERS used by law enforcement agencies:

Draft VDMERS Standard for Law Enforcement
Draft Law Enforcement VDMERS Certification Program Requirements
Draft Law Enforcement VDMERS Selection and Application Guide

The notice says, “The opportunity to provide comments on these documents is open to industry technical representatives, law enforcement agencies and organizations, research, development and scientific communities, and all other stakeholders and interested parties.” The deadline for comments is Sept. 21, 2011.

Enjoy.

DSI-Vegas next week

I'm getting things ready to head to Las Vegas and the DSI-Vegas conference next week. For a refreshing change, I'm presenting a demo and workshop on Premiere Pro CS5.5. I'm sure that I'll sneak another product or two into the mix.

I'm going to break from the usual teaching routine and focus on specific cases and video files to demonstrate the power of the program. From weird sized video to hiding faces, we'll really kick the tyres next week.

See you there.

CCTV User Group looks at UK riots

"... the Met Police alone, have identified 3,296 criminal incidents related to the riots and have already made over 1,883 arrests and charged over 1,074 people, principally based on recordings from the Public Area CCTV cameras, but also their own 'body worn' cameras and owners systems, a remarkable achievement!

This is echoed the results from Birmingham (by the 13th 509 arrested and 141 charged), Manchester(256 arrested, 166 charged), Merseyside (by the 15th 216 arrested and 86 charged), Nottingham and other Town and Cities similarly affected. A fantastic result that couldn't have been achieved without the Local Authority Public Area CCTV systems, and the support of all the 'back office staff' within the Police Forces!

Now, hopefully the additional resources, proposed by the Police, have quietened things down, but be under no dis-illusion the work of the Police and Local Authorities behind the scenes is still at fever pitch ..."

Click here to read the whole article.

Enjoy.

Easing the transition to Adobe Premiere Pro

Last week, Al Mooney presented a seminar on easing the transition to Adobe Premiere Pro from another NLE, such as Final Cut Pro.

Here’s the recording.

(Note: If the Adobe Connect session loses audio/video synch, just click the playhead in Adobe Connect, and it will re-synchronize.)

Enjoy.

Why doesn't Photoshop support my camera?

From Adobe's Jeff Tranberry: "I just got a new camera and Photoshop won't recognize my files.

First, make sure you have the latest updates for Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop. (The process to update Lightroom is similar. Launch Lightroom and choose Help>Check for Updates…) It’s always a good idea to have the latest updates installed.

Second, if updating to the latest version doesn’t give you joy and let you open your camera raw files, verify your camera make and model is on the list of supported cameras.

Third, if your camera isn’t on the list of supported cameras check on Adobe Labs for a release candidates of the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in or Adobe Lightroom. A release candidate is a very close to done version of the plug-in that Adobe shares with the community prior to full release for additional testing.

Finally, if your camera came out within the past 90 days, be patient, as you may need to wait for the new camera support. Adobe goes through a rigorous process of adding support for and testing of each new camera raw format. Adobe generally releases updates of the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in and Lightroom to provide new camera support about once a quarter, or about every 90 days. Feel free to drop us request or vote for specific camera support on our Feedback Site."

Enjoy.

Amateur Photographers Beware

This just in from the Long Beach (Ca) Post: "Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures "with no apparent esthetic value" is within Long Beach Police Department policy.

McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of a North Long Beach refinery.

"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.

McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer's subject has "apparent esthetic value," officers make such judgments "based on their overall training and experience" and will generally approach photographers not engaging in "regular tourist behavior."

This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD's "policy … to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism."

Among the non-criminal behaviors "which shall be reported on a SAR" are the usage of binoculars and cameras (presumably when observing a building, although this is not specified), asking about an establishment's hours of operation, taking pictures or video footage "with no apparent esthetic value," and taking notes ..."

Makes me think ... no esthetic value? One of my favourite photographers is Henk van Rensbergen of Abandoned Places fame. One man's disused factory is another's photo-op.

Click here to read the whole article.

Enjoy.

Exporting from Lightroom and running Photoshop Droplets / Actions

This just in from Adobe's Julieanne Kost: "To Export files from Lightroom and automatically launch Photoshop in order to run Droplets (batch actions), place the droplet in the Export Actions folder:

• Mac (user)/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Export Actions

• Win (user)/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom/Export Actions

Then, in the Export dialog box under the Post Processing section, choose Post Processing > After Export > (name of droplet). For more information on using Photoshop Actions with Lightroom click here …"

Yes, I know that I've spoken and written against the use of LR for law enforcement. I've also written about the fact that I love LR for my personal and professional, non law enforcement use. :) Enjoy.

Searching for a Safe Expert

With the downturn in the economy, there are a few people finding their way into the expert pool with less than stellar qualifications. Some of these people have no education and little experience in their chosen field - and know little about how to present themselves and their evidence in court. Here's a cautionary tale from the BullsEye Blog: "Experts, unfortunately, are not always honest about their credentials, as numerous examples have recently proven.

A dramatic example in 2007 occurred when a New Orleans federal judge threw out a jury verdict in favor of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. after a cardiologist who testified for the defense in a Vioxx trial was found to have misrepresented his credentials.

In 2009, the expert witness for a suspended NASCAR driver was found to not have the medical degrees or certifications he claimed.

A year later, a Northampton County grand jury found fire investigator Edmund G. Knight III guilty of lying about his credentials. At the time, District Attorney John Morganelli said that Knight’s case was important because of the “integrity of our judicial system, particularly expert witnesses.”

As these cases prove, knowing how to verify the background of an expert – whether yours or your opponent’s – could prove critical to your case. What can you do to confirm the credentials of experts?

The internet has, in recent years, hosted a variety of resources and tools that contain potentially valuable information but that many attorneys overlook in researching an expert’s background. Of course, these tools are neither foolproof nor exhaustive.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

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Plug-in security fix for Photoshop CS5

As analysts, we get images from all sorts of sources. Lately, I've been processing a lot of images that were stored in cell phones. With this in mind, Adobe has announced the latest security update to Photoshop CS5: "Maliciously coded GIF files could cause Photoshop to crash, so the team has posted an update. If you open GIFs in Photoshop, please download the update for Mac, Win64, and/or Win32. They recommend making certain that you’re running the most recent version of Photoshop. To check/update, choose Help->Updates inside Photoshop CS5 and apply all of the updates listed under Adobe Photoshop CS5."

Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

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Expert's Gut Feeling Good Enough?

From the BullsEye Blog: "Although expert opinions must be based in fact, they are still individualized opinions and are occasionally, as the New Jersey Appellate Court stated on July 5, based on an expert’s “gut feeling”.

In a construction claim case involving real estate valuation, expert witness J. Anthony Dowling admitted to basing his opinion on a “feeling of costs”. The testimony in Nevins v. Toll Brothers, Inc. reveals that approximately 90 percent of Dowling’s cost estimations were “gut feelings” without any data tying them to the plaintiff’s specific location or project. You can read a portion of the exchange between defense counsel and Dowling in this blog post on the decision.

Because Dowling is a professional construction cost estimator and has sufficient credentials to serve as an expert witness, the appeals court found his opinion to be valid testimony. The other factor influencing the decision was the precedent of similar testimony admitted in a similar case.

Despite this ruling, other cases suggest there is a trend toward requiring a more factual basis for expert testimony. Numerous cases have addressed the issue of what is, and is not, admissible testimony according to the Federal Rules of Evidence, Daubert and other standards. The common theme is a demand for more detail and more specific analysis related to the facts of the case.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

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In an Expert, Passion Equals Credibility

Helpful advice from IMS Expert Services: "Credibility is a key attribute in an expert witness, every trial lawyer would agree. But how do you gauge a potential expert's credibility? What attributes provide the best predictors of how the expert will measure up in the eyes of a jury?

For Kirkland & Ellis partner Andrew R. McGaan, a lawyer who has tried and won jury and non-jury cases throughout the United States, experience has taught him to look for something other than what he was taught as a young lawyer.

Conventional wisdom teaches lawyers to look for well-credentialed experts with degrees from prestigious schools, honors in their field and experience testifying. That wisdom carries kernels of truth, the Chicago-based McGaan says, but credentials are not at the top of his list.

"Credibility comes first and foremost from having an expert with direct experience in exactly the same problem as you are dealing with in the courtroom – experience in the real world, not as a testifying expert," he explains.

But hands-on experience is only half the equation. The other trait McGaan looks for in an expert is passion about his or her work. "If they have an innate passion for what they do, that comes through in their ability to explain the field to everyday people on the jury who have no background in it and probably don't care about it."

An expert McGaan found with the help of IMS ExpertServices provides a case in point, he says. He was defending a pipe manufacturer in a products liability claim brought by an oil refinery after a large fire forced it to shut down. His defense called for close scrutiny of how the refinery maintained its pipes, responded to the fire and rebuilt in its aftermath.

The expert he sought would have to be thoroughly familiar with the design, maintenance, and construction of an oil refinery. IMS helped him find someone with precisely that experience. He was a petroleum engineer who had spent years running and maintaining refineries and budgeting and overseeing their rebuilding after fires. He had even been president of an oil company that owned a refinery.

There was one problem. He had never testified in court. That worried McGaan, but the veteran trial lawyer weighed the expert's lack of testimonial experience against his track record and passion for his work and made the decision to retain him. He was glad he did.

"While telling the story, whether on direct or cross-exam, it was obvious to everyone that he loved what he did – that he had a natural interest and passion for worrying about refinery problems and repairs," McGaan said.

With an untested expert, his ability to stand up to cross-examination is McGaan's biggest worry, he says. "Experts can get eaten alive on cross, if they don't understand what an artificial dialogue it is."

But in the case of the oil-refinery expert, he proved to be particularly effective when being cross-examined, McGaan recalled. "Every time he was asked any question along the lines of, 'How do you know that?' his answer was, 'Because I've done exactly that.' Even though he was on the witness stand, his physical demeanor remained that of a petroleum engineer who felt most comfortable standing around pipes."

In fact, too much testimonial experience can sometimes be a detriment during cross-examination, McGaan believes, because what comes through to the jury is the expert's courtroom experience, not his passion for the topic.

McGaan draws an analogy to hiring a plumber for your home. "When a plumber comes to your home for the first time, you can quickly tell if he's done this work before and if he has a passion for getting it right."

Jurors look for similar qualities in a trial witness. "The jurors know that the spotlight is on them," McGaan explains. "They look at every witness with the same question, 'Are you someone who is going to help me sort through this problem or not?'"

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

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Hiring Experts You Don't Plan to Use

Here's a cautionary tale for expert witnesses from IMS Expert Services: "Do lawyers ever retain experts just to lock them out from being hired by the other side? If so, is the tactic fair play in the hardball game of litigation? Or are lawyers who would do this, as one court suggested, short on scruples?

Ask either lawyers or experts whether they see this done and their answers range from "often" to "never." Ask them whether they approve of the practice and their answers vary just as widely. But ask lawyers whether they do it themselves and no one's hand goes up.

"Lawyers do occasionally contact or 'retain' experts solely to disqualify them from working for the other side," says Erik Anderson, senior attorney in the corporate legal department of Safeco Insurance Company of America. He should know: he faced this situation in a case not long ago in which one party sought to disqualify the other's expert.

Another lawyer who has seen it done is David W. White, a trial attorney in Boston who is also president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. Although he would never do it himself, he once found himself the victim of this tactic.

"It was an antiques case, where fraud was alleged," White says. "There wasn’t an available independent expert on the east coast of the U.S. because the plaintiff had consulted them all."

This tactic of "locking out" experts occurs most commonly in either of two scenarios, lawyers and experts agree. Either the field is highly specialized and there is a limited pool of qualified experts or the expert is so uniquely distinguished that he or she is highly sought after.

Consider Werner Engelmaier, for example. He is one of only a handful of experts who specialize in the design, manufacturing and reliability of electronic packaging. When he first became an expert witness, colleagues warned him of the practice. And then something similar happened to him.

"The law firm contacted me and made disclosures to me about the case before ever retaining me," he says. "They never did retain me, but they had disclosed so much that I had to recuse myself from working with anyone else in the case."

Ever since, Engelmaier has structured his retainer agreement in a manner designed to insulate himself from similar taints. He requires a steep retainer, $10,000, and blocks potential clients from disclosing anything about the case to him until the retainer is paid.

If the client retains him, then once his billing exceeds $10,000, he returns the retainer. Of course, if the client does not retain him, he refunds the retainer. "This serves to discourage preemptive disclosures that would disqualify me from the case," he says.

Click here to read the whole article.

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Denver crime lab wins prestigious seal of approval

"The closest the real world comes to the fictitious sleuths of television's "CSI" is now in Denver.

Every unit of the Denver Police Department's crime lab has now won seals of approval based on the most rigorous international standards — one of just a handful of labs in the nation to achieve the standard across all the disciplines it utilizes.

Lab director Greggory LaBerge has even grander plans for his department, which he hopes can become a regional forensics hub after a move into a new $39 million building next summer.

LaBerge touts the economic benefits of low crime rates and the police resources saved by reliable forensics work. But more important, he said, is peace of mind for crime victims.

"It's all about trust. The first thing you want to know is if people are going to catch the person who did this to me," LaBerge said. Evidence "could get thrown out of court if you don't meet certain standards. . . . We are meeting and surpassing those standards."

The 42 employees and 20 volunteers at the Police Department's lab pitch in on up to 15,000 investigations a year. Nearly every day, one of them presents their findings in criminal court cases, LaBerge said.

The International Organization of Standards in Switzerland sets guidelines for any type of profession that requires scientific precision, among them forensics work in police labs.

Denver's chemistry, DNA, fingerprinting, trace evidence and ballistics units met those ISO standards in 2005. In late July, the lab's final two units — those that handle crime scenes and video evidence — met those standards too.

Denver's is the second crime lab in the country to win approval of its forensic imaging unit, which scrubs audio, video and photos for clues. They produce the Crime Stopper images that generate tips from the public and isolate license plate numbers from grainy surveillance video, among other jobs.

Continue reading this story by clicking here.

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Scripting an Expert Witness?

Here's a cautionary tale for Expert Witnesses from IMS Expert Services: "How do you fit a square expert witness into a round case? You don't, of course, but many lawyers make the mistake of trying. Rather than tailor their theory of the case to fit the expert's opinion, they try to shape the expert's opinion to fit their theory.

It is a mismatch that can weaken a case and undermine an expert, says veteran trial lawyer Albert L. Jacobs Jr., National Chair – Intellectual Property with Greenberg Traurig in New York.

"I want to build the case based on the expert's view of the issues," explains Jacobs, a patent lawyer for more than 30 years. "I have my own ideas about the case, but I'm not hiring an expert to read from a script."

Far too often, Jacobs says, it is obvious to him that the opposing party has hired its expert for the specific purpose of propounding a point of view. But when an expert is testifying from a script, it is much easier for the other side to trip him up.

For this reason, Jacobs says, he advocates bringing the expert on board at the earliest possible opportunity.

"If I'm the plaintiff, I want the expert on board before we file suit. I want to work together with the expert and formulate the strongest possible position."

The same holds true when he represents the defendant. "I want the expert on board as quickly as I can. I want to discuss with the expert his or her views on infringement or noninfringement and validity or invalidity."

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

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Choosing the right settings in Premiere Pro CS5.5

One reader asks about choosing settings when setting up Premiere Pro. The reader has a clip with unknown properties. In older, consumer versions of Sony Vegas, you used to be able to tell the program to create a project based on the properties of a clip, the reader said. She wants to be able to do that in Premiere Pro.

... well .... you can.

Here's how. In Premiere Pro CS5.5, you can create a new sequence from a selected clip by one of the following methods:

Drag and drop a clip onto the New Item button.
Choose File>New>Sequence from Clip.
It's actually pretty easy, once you get the hang of it.

Enjoy.