The process of investigating a digital video recording to learn if it has been altered or tampered with is called 'Forensic Video Analysis'.
When video that is going to be used in the courtroom or serve as a tool to understand the events as they occurred it's integrity may be questioned. Because video is an extremely important medium, some litigators intentionally alter video before it is ever seen by a trier of fact. It is not always the intention of the person to deceive; often they edit video only to show those scenes or facts as they occurred in an effort to save time. The problem with this logic is that the scenes that were removed could become important as the investigation moves forward.
The biggest problem from a video forensic expert’s perspective is that video that has been edited loses integrity.
Lack of integrity is a deal breaker in court for digital video evidence.
For example, if a witness testifies and appears to lack integrity, the testimony will serve of little value to the Trier of Fact. The same is true with digital video evidence integrity. It is extremely important to submit your entire original video recording into evidence, not just a portion of it.
Once both parties in the litigation have reviewed the video recording submitted that reveals a series of events, one or more of the parties in the litigation may ask if the video has been edited. This question is best answered by determining, through forensic investigation, the integrity of the video recording.
Video forensic experts follow a series of action steps to determine if a video recording, video tape, digital video file or DVD has been edited.
One of the first steps in the video authentication process is to understand how the video was recorded; what type of equipment was used? Smartphone video? Tablet video? Was it a surveillance video? Perhaps a police dash-cam video?
The second step is to determine if what the expert is investigating is an original or a copy. By way of definition, an original is a video that has been agreed 'original' by all parties in the litigation.
The next step is for the video forensic expert to view the video evidence in a forensic lab at normal viewing speed. This is done by playing the video evidence in whatever forensic or propitiatory software or hardware that is necessary to view the video.
A Forensic Experts will look for any video anomalies that cause concern or question scientific explanation as to why that anomaly is there. Abrupt scene changes or repeated frames are closely examined by the video forensic expert. I recently worked on a case and discovered 29 edits in one 10 minute segment of video evidence.
There are two trains of thought in this circumstance.
The video sections that ARE present are accurate and represent those events as they occurred. However, the forensic expert must look into the reasons why only those segments of video are submitted into evidence and other events were removed.
Forensic video analysis by a trained experience video forensic expert will answer any and all questions you have about the integrity of your video recording.
