Situation

A hit and run is caught on CCTV footage outside a local supermarket, the vehicle is seen leaving the scene. The video evidence team has been tasked with identifying the license plate of the vehicle.

Workflow

The CCTV footage is in a proprietary format and is unable to play on standard media players, so the video evidence team use Amped FIVE’s powerful conversion engine to view the video.

After converting and viewing the footage they can see that the license plate has a blur effect obscuring the details of the license plate. After successfully applying the motion deblur filter they realize that the license plate’s resolution and pixel quality in a single frame is not enough. They decide the best course of action would be to stabilize the video and carry out a frame average. The frame average will remove any noise and enhance the details of the license plate further. This proves successful and after cropping and resizing the license plate they can successfully trace the vehicle back to the owner.

Conclusion

The police are now able to bring the suspect in for an interview.

Situation

The police are handed CCTV footage of an unknown suspect involved in a high value theft.

Workflow

The police requested the Video Analysts to determine the height of the suspect from the CCTV footage. On review of the footage the experts were able to determine that it suffered from distortion created by the camera lens. Using Amped FIVE they are able to apply the undistort filter to correct this before attempting to analyse the suspects height.

The footage is of high enough resolution and there are enough references on the scene to apply the Measure 3D tool. After the investigators supplied a known measurement from the crime scene the analyst applied the Measure 3D filter to determine the suspects height with a given error.

Conclusion

The police are now confident that the suspect falls within a certain height range and can narrow their search for the suspect.

Situation

The Military Police are investigating an individual for an alleged drugs job when they come across body worn camera footage from Afghanistan. Reviewing the footage they witness a murder of a wounded and unarmed terrorist.

Workflow

The Multimedia Evidence team have been tasked with producing two pieces of evidence from the footage. They need to help identify the suspect and also produce a redacted version of the footage to be released to the media.

In order to identify the suspect they select the relevant frames in which the suspect is stationary, adjust the levels, crop the head of the suspect, and then apply a frame average to enhance the detail and remove noise. Finally by resizing the image they have managed to get a clear visual of the suspect.

To create a redacted version of the video they select the relevant frames. Due to strong language and sensitive data they also apply the Redact Audio filter. This enables them to remove any audio required before releasing the video to the media. Finally they sensitize the video by applying Hide Selection to the faces of other people present in the video.

Conclusion

Using Amped FIVE they have successfully managed to release the required footage to the media and create sufficient evidence to identify the suspect.

Situation

A case involving the downloading of CSA material has reached court. The defendant is disputing the installation of peer-to-peer file sharing software, but photographs taken at the scene of the warrant show the suspect’s computer switched on at the time with the software live and running. Unfortunately, the photograph suffers from a blur disturbance and the time and date shown on the active computer is unclear.

Workflow

Amped FIVE was used to deblur the photograph and allowed for the time and date to be clarified. A full forensic report and an Amped FIVE project was created to show the court the actions taken and to prove no unnecessary editing or planting had taken place.

Conclusion

The suspect pleaded guilty to the offence following this new evidence submitted by the prosecution.

Situation

Following a deadly collapse of a building, investigators need to assess the cause of the incident. Two aerial pictures acquired years apart have to be compared to assess whether the building had been illegally reshaped in time. The older picture has no colors and suffers from a noise pattern that complicates comparison. Moreover, pictures were taken with different equipment, and the perspective is not consistent between the two.

Workflow

Using Amped FIVE's Fourier filter, the older picture is clarified. Thanks to the Perspective Aligner tool, the perspective of the two images is registered by simply clicking on a few pairs of reference elements that are present in both pictures (road intersections, historical buildings, etc.). The more recent picture is converted to grayscale allowing for direct pixel comparison. Images can then be overlaid, and a difference image is also produced which confirms the good match between elements that remained unaltered in history, while modifications in the questioned building clearly stand out.

Conclusion

By examination of the produced images, changes in the building shape become evident and indisputable. Building owners are prosecuted as responsible for the fatal incident.