Video editing police interviews

[hddvdrebel]

Hi. I work in the criminal justice system as a local prosecutor. Due to our times, every police investigation usually involves some sort of recorded police interview, usually on a DVD. Due to the law, a police interview usually cannot be played in court without editing out portions of the video. For example, a suspect may spend time talking all of his prior crimes or the times he or she has been to prison. At a jury trial, none of this is relevant and the judge will always exclude evidence of prior crimes so that a jury will not convict someone merely because of their criminal history, but rather only on their current crime.

Audio interviews are very easy to edit using Audacity, or Roxio audio editing. The problem is editing dvd video. I work in a small rural county without a lot of money, so our computers run on XP, and are primarily set up for crunching words, rather than video.

Currently, we use DVD Shrink to copy a police interview DVD (usually from a standard home type DVD recorder used by the police) to a hard drive. Then we use DVD Shrink's program to do a reverse editing, by saving the relevant parts of the police interview and leaving out the excluded parts. Then we have a series of separate titles, and then save the result to an ISO file. Then the DVD is burned, without any menus, so it will play on a standard DVD player in court (usually projected on a screen via a powerpoint projector) during the jury trial. DVD Shrink doesn't seem to need to recode the video, which takes hours, uses more horsepower than we have available, and usually gives a "file error" code a few hours in. Furthermore, the judges and defense attorneys are always adding additional edits, so we have to fix the interview with more deletions, and have very little time to do it.

Some police and retail store surveillance videos do not come in a DVD compliant format, but rather as a video file like avi, wmv, or some propriatory format that will only play on a computer. We sometime have to do a work around by playing the video on a computer that has an S Video output on the videocard, and then record it to a standard home type DVD recorder.

Any suggestions of how to do this more efficiently and make the process easy. Our biggest problem is the county IT department who won't load DVD Shrink onto a county computer because it is freeware, with the potential of copying very old commercial DVD's, so many of us have to use personal computers from home to get the job done.

[edDV]

I'm not a forensic video expert but I can offer some expert testimony.

You must preserve the original evidence custody so anyone from the other side can replicate whatever you do.

Second, you must maintain a log so they may challenge your technique but not evidence vulnerability or reasonable doubt, et etc. Then they must show you screwed up, with the same evidence not that it may be possible you screwed up.

[jimmalenko]

There are a number of ways to make this process easier. However working in an IT Dept myself, nothing frustrates me more than people going outside our Department and/or over my head because they don't like the answer they got from me. That said, using your home computers for an essential work task is ridiculous.

I would complain to your superiors that your IT Dept is preventing you from doing your job effectively and in a timely manner to the point where you are using home PCs to fulfill rudimentary work tasks.

If that doesn't work, put in an expenses claim for a new home PC that you use 100% for work purposes.

If that doesn't work, get your OH & S Dept to do a workplace inspection of your home office.

Eventually if you shake enough trees, you will get corrective action.

[johns0]

An easier way of editing dvd and making dvd is to try TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4.

[minidv2dvd]

a decent editing program that will also convert most avis to dvd mpeg-2 would be advised. sony vegas pro or maybe a womble product that can cut/edit mpeg-2 without re-encoding. also a dvd authoring program.

or contract the work out, it would probably cost less than what they pay for your time. unless you volunteer all the time it takes to edit video

[hddvdrebel]

I'm not a forensic video expert but I can offer some expert testimony.

You must preserve the original evidence custody so anyone from the other side can replicate whatever you do.

Second, you must maintain a log so they may challenge your technique but not evidence vulnerability or reasonable doubt, et etc. Then they must show you screwed up, with the same evidence not that it may be possible you screwed up.

Original DVD's never leave the police evidence system. We only deal with copies. Establishing the chain is never a problem, because we would gladly play the entire video without an edit. It is the defendant and the court that requires us to eliminate quotes like "I've been to prison four times" or "I just got off parole". One of my biggest problems is that our IT department, as well as many law enforcement agencies, don't understand the rules of evidence. Once an interview is burned onto the original DVD-R (or DVD+R), it can't be messed with, so long as the original stays in an evidence system. Any evidence system relies on the basic honesty of a law enforcement agency. Any video/audio created for court, i.e, "forensic", must be able to have irrelevant portions eliminated. See Calif Evidence Code Section 352.

We have a county wide IT department and we are one of the smallest departments they serve. California is about to sink beneath the waves due to the budget crisis created by "budget by initiative" and other such foolishness. The State is probably coming to take money from the counties, as they have done in the past. We have no money to outsource, and even an outsource doesn't take into account a last minute demand by the court. IT bills our department's budget for every visit, even if they have to re-fix what wasn't fixed correctly the first time...and each requires a written work order and wait. (BTW our IT guys are great, but they have to function under their rules, luckily they try to bend and twist the rule to help us do our job.

The Feds will have lots of money for the street cops, but they can only detain someone for 48 hours without a criminal action filed by us. Yes, we should make a big stink, and have, but we have an ethical obligation to our client ("The People"), so we drag in our home computers to get the job done. Real life isn't like CSI or Law and Order. Getting 12 jurors from the community to agree on anything, "beyond a reasonable doubt", is damn near a miracle as it is.

Ideally we would be happy to have DVD Shrink and IMGBURN loaded on the county computers, or at least a DVD Shrink type freeware that can edit without a recode... (we don't need the decryptor or even the "shrink", just being able to cut without recoding)

Ultimately its about the money and the turf wars...

P.S. yes, we do a lot of this on our own time because we have the ethical duty to do our best, and we take that very seriously.

[Number Six]

Try VideoReDo - it is not free, but very reasonable for what it does - and it gives you a free trial period.

[olyteddy]

Could you use a laptop in the courtroom as a player? Then you could load the video on a thumb drive and make as many different versions or edits as you want using almost any program like AVIDeMux or VirtualDub.

[hddvdrebel]

Yes, we use laptops in the courtroom, but we have to have a physical thing, like a DVD-R to introduce into evidence. It also needs to be in a format that can still be read years from now (or at least during the appeal period). DVD video is preferred because players are universally available, and will still be available years from now just as movie projectors, VHS players, vinyl record players. They are becoming rare, but are still available.

What is scary is a murder case, with a parole hearing in 30 years. Will the victim's family video impact statement be playable long after many persons have died, but that is another story.

[hddvdrebel]

VideoReDo or AVIDeMux or VirtualDub. Can any of these programs do an edit without recoding the video?? Are they user friendly??? Personally I love a "Swiss army knife" program that does lots of stuff, but for work I need something that edits quickly and easily and can produce a DVD Video format ready for playing in any DVD player.

The beauty of DVD Shrink is no requirement of recoding and being able to save the result as an ISO file, and then burn the end result to a DVD-R for instant use. Usually I can do a quick fix (like making single change to a previously edited ISO) using DVD Shrink, save the result as an ISO and then burn a DVD in 20 minutes or less.

[Number Six]

VideoReDo TVSuite will do fast frame copy without recoding if you set it to keep all the original parameters - it will also burn it to a DVD for you. It is very user friendly once you get used to it - I can edit out commercials from a 2 hour TV recording in less than 10 minutes.