Vegas: CSI

MichaelS wrote on 7/7/2006, 11:51 AM
The local sheriff's department has brought me a disk of video files (.Avi) from a video surveillance system. They need me to pull some stills of the "bad guy".

The .Avi files are not recognized by Vegas. What program will ID the AVI and tell me the codec needed for the files?

Any other help or suggestions...in a hurry would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Comments

p@mast3rs wrote on 7/7/2006, 11:57 AM
download gspot and it will tell you what codec what used in the avi files.
johnmeyer wrote on 7/7/2006, 12:22 PM
Lots of low-framerate systems use MJPEG.
MichaelS wrote on 7/7/2006, 12:24 PM
Thanks!

It is a GEOX mp4 format. Downloaded the codec and voila!

2G wrote on 7/7/2006, 5:49 PM
What??? You don't have that special software they use on CSI:Las Vegas, CSI:Miami, and CSI:New York that can enhance a grainy survellance video and identify the the type of bug squashed on a license plate reflected in the eyeball of a cat 100 yards away??? Sheesh... I thought everybody had that..... :-)
farss wrote on 7/8/2006, 4:59 PM
You'd be surprised just what you can achieve with a bit of lateral thinking and determination. In a very high profile case down here someone with a lot of patience and time was able to prove which color a car was from B&W surveillance footage. From that even without the cars number plate they could dramatically narrow down the chances of it not being the accussed's car that was near the scene.
Bob.
p@mast3rs wrote on 7/8/2006, 5:18 PM
It was the the two Utes' car.
fldave wrote on 7/8/2006, 5:41 PM
My Cousin Vinny! One of my favorites!

"What's a Ute?"
TeeJay wrote on 7/9/2006, 3:18 AM
"what's a Ute"?

Down here in Oz, it refers to a Utility vehicle, otherwise known as a pickup truck in the US of A.
MichaelS wrote on 7/9/2006, 10:17 AM
We help out law enforcement quite often. On a recent case, they captured an armed robbery suspect based on the markings of his tennis shoes. While he was wearing a mask and hood, his shoes were the only element that he continued to wear.

We took the surveillance camera video and made them a series of stills to distribute to law enforcement. The local police trolled the local hangouts until they found a guy wearing the shoes. Busted.

Does anyone have experience with the video enhancement software advertised for law enforcement? It's pricey. Just curiuos as to how it works and how effective it is.






RNLVideo wrote on 7/9/2006, 11:03 AM
Michael -

Yes, in my "real" job, I oversee two forensic video labs. At home, I use Vegas for personal / hobby - business use.

Most of the products marketed for forensic video analysis are specific tool sets based on NLE's (Ocean System's dTective on AVID for example). Additional image processing is done on still images from the video (using Photoshop for example).

Some pretty amazing results can be obtained, but it falls way short of anything you'd see on CSI.

You hit on one thing that everyone in the FVA community is trying to get their arms around - DVR footage. Vegas does a very nice job in this area because it will basically ingest anything you have a codec for. The project can (and should) be conformed to the media properties (frame rate, resolution) and Vegas makes this quite easy to do.

Rick
DataMeister wrote on 8/8/2006, 10:44 PM
Well there are programs like this out there http://www.salientstills.com/products/videofocus/index.html which use multiple frames of the video to create a more detailed still image.