Solutions to the Frustrations of Video?

Re-Torque asks: "In our organizations, interviews with perpetrators of crime (child abuse, rape, etc), and with victims, are conducted by expert interviewers and are recorded on videotape or DVD (with back ups). These recordings are legal records. They are archival records, but they are also used in the courts and in other aspects of the legal process. We have encountered problems with newer VCRs and DVD recorders. As long as the tape or DVD is played back on the same machine, there is no degradation of audio and video quality. However, when played back on any other machine, the quality of the recording is substantially degraded. We have been told that this is to frustrate illegal copying, but in our case, it frustrates the legal process. In your experience, is the problem in fact one of design of the machines or are we doing something wrong (i.e., some settings we should change before recording)? Are there any machines available that are not crippled in this way? Or are there other strategies we might employ to resolve this problem?"

Comments

This is beautiful

[TLouden]

Let me be the first (or somewhere close) to say that it's high time the legal system finally saw some of the ill effects of 'protecting' hollywood.

Use a computer

[delirium of disorder]

Why not display the video using a PC with a video card that has composite or S-video output? You should be able to hook up to any modern TV or projector. You could encode the video in whatever format you want: lossless DV, Ogg Theora, XviD, even WMV if you are really sadistic. You could store it on whatever medium you want: DVD, a hard disk, a NAS, CD, usb flash drives, whatever. Backups should be easy.

Re:Use a computer

[mandos]

To add to the above: the digital form gives you more flexiablity in delivering the content. You don't necessarily have to be at the same physical location. I mention this, as more and more prisons are going to telepresense of inmates in courtrooms. Rather then bussing them from the prison to courthouse and back, just doing a video confernce via the courthouse and prison. No reason why the same underlying technologies can't be used to desiminate video interviews. Likewise, if you go to court, but forgot one of the videos or needed an additional one the digital form would allow you to retrieve it without leaving the courtroom.

Lastly, newer video codecs allow for compression much greater then MPEG-2 used on DVDs. This means that your archive could use less physical space to store more videos. I believe an additional Ask Slashdot coverd this a few days ago. This also helps protect you against technology obseletion. Rather then being stuck with 10,000 VHS tapes in 2015, just do a batch convert from format A to format B as needed, and then stream the resulting video to the courtroom.

a couple solutions

[blackcoot]

yes, there are uncrippled machines that can do what you want (and then some). you probably have one sitting on your desk

if you're running under linux, you've got a couple options. kino (http://www.kinodv.org/ will allow you to capture live raw video (plus sound) from a standard dv camera with an ilink (aka 1394a) connection. it takes a little effort to get setup, but it's worth it. you'll then want to use ffmpeg to re-encode the files so that they're less huge and then save the encoded version.

if you have analog cameras, a $50 capture card (we use ati's all-in-wonder) can act as a frame grabber --- it may take a little finagling to get the sound working, but once it's all hooked up you should be good to go. use xawtv to preview and make sure that everything is behaving as expected, then use ffmpeg to capture the video. make sure you encode at fairly high bit rate and be careful about what combinations of codec and containers you choose (in particular, you probably want to stick to msmpeg4v2 encoded .wmv files if you intend the video to be played back on windows machines). if you've installed something like VLC on the playback machines, you can use more interesting codecs like h264 and still achieve quite impressive playback quality at much lower bitrates.

there are ways to do similar things in windows, although i have much less experience doing so and tend to use developers tools (like graphedit) to put together the directshow filters that will capture video and sound from some source, encode, mux, and then output the file. i'm sure that there are pieces of software out there that can do this. if you have access to some it people, writing your own should be fairly easy (there's a handy book on the subject here: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Microsoft/dp/073 5618216/sr=8-1/qid=1156903037/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-273 5593-2181510?ie=UTF8)

if you're not inclined to build your own solution, virtualdub http://www.virtualdub.org/ may be able to help you. i haven't used it myself, but it's a pretty widely used app.

the one thing to bear in mind with all these proposed solutions is that you're going to want to make sure you've got fairly big and fast disks and quite a lot of space free. you're also going to want to make sure you've got a reliable backup strategy in place since you no longer have the luxury of the original tapes. if you have any other questions, feel free to email me: (my slashdot user name) 'at' yahoo(dot com).

Welcome to the future

[Wylfing]

Unauthorized footage is prohibited. Think of the goddam starving grips, script writers, and boom operators who you are putting out into the street because you are undercutting their livelihood with your "recordings" for "legal purposes." What a crock. If you really are "law enforcement" you should do things the right way and hire a Hollywood studio to record these things for you. Anything else is the same as shoplifting.

Seriously, you are SOL. There are definitely ways to beat this kind of thing, but you will be breaking the law and/or causing others to break the law simply by inquiring. The operators of Slashdot may even get a nice visit from the FBI if anyone posts methods for how to defeat these copy protection measures.

Welcome to the future, where due process is no obstacle to protecting media companies' profits.