Some Advice Please (Marstons)

[Sir Vere Brayne d'Emmidge]

Re: Some Advice Please (Marstons)

The bodycams are allegedly for the benefit of EAs and alleged fine defaulters, but, as you quite rightly point out, there is nothing to prevent a corrupt EA not switching on the bodycam or deleting footage that is compromising to the EA

As far as I have been told the EA can not interfere with the footage recorded by the camera.

Apparently, at the end of the day, they have to plug it into a computer directly linked with the mainframe computer at Head Office, and the whole footage for the day is sent encrypted.

Alledgedly there are only a handful of people at Head Office who can access the footage, and these few don't even check it (think ... 400+ EAs, 3/4 hours worth of film every day), or if they it's at random.

I have also been told that the amount of footage retained at any one time covers the past 60 days only ... it's an enourmous amount of data!

[bizzybob]

Re: Some Advice Please (Marstons)

That is a hell of a lot of footage even if the camera records only low bitrate VGA, also theee will be an issue with the dile naming conventions which identify every individual clip, they must be saved in a folder exclusive to that EA.

[Sir Vere Brayne d'Emmidge]

Re: Some Advice Please (Marstons)

That is a hell of a lot of footage even if the camera records only low bitrate VGA, also theee will be an issue with the dile naming conventions which identify every individual clip, they must be saved in a folder exclusive to that EA.

My source at Marston tells me that is the case.

Every EA has it's own folder, and that the footage has a record of when it was started and finished, this then is coupled with the entries on the EA's PDA, and is therefore fairly easily recovered.

[bizzybob]

Re: Some Advice Please (Marstons)

Now if they were to pull the cable between the computer and the camera whilst it is transferring data, there is a more than evens chance that the data is corrupted, the file knackered and not viewable; notwithstanding possible damage to the cameras memory

[ploddertom]

Re: Some Advice Please (Marstons)

I think I'd be concerned over file sizes & how they are transmitted.

[bizzybob]

Re: Some Advice Please (Marstons)

I think I'd be concerned over file sizes & how they are transmitted.

The file size could be anything from 100 MB to 1.5 Gb for 10 minutes depending on what resolution and the compression CODEC used in the camera, 1080p HD MJPEG would be around 1.,5 GB for the 10 minutes, they normally break the footage into 10 chunks on these small type cameras, as the memory will likely be formatted FAT 16 or FAT 32 with a maximum filesize of 1.99Gb and 3.99 Gb respectively. Either way these files are big for network transmission. They may film at VGA and use H264 with AAC audio in which case the files may be considerably smalle and be MOV or mp4. All this is conjecture and it would be good to know the spec of the cameras used.
Ohh lok what I found here, these may be the very animal at £299.95 plus VAT a pop

http://www.globalfocus.ltd.uk/store/...ro-camera-16gb

[Sir Vere Brayne d'Emmidge]

Re: Some Advice Please (Marstons)

This is the one!

http://www.edesix.com/police-hub?gcl...FUmWtAodmH0AhQ

[bizzybob]

Re: Some Advice Please (Marstons)

This is the one!

http://www.edesix.com/police-hub?gcl...FUmWtAodmH0AhQ

Great thanks Sir Vere, footage could be compromised on data transfer if it is pulled out of the dock as it is downloading, but on the face of it it is a good system.

I would have hoped there was a detailed specification of the vamera viz its resolution, and CODEC used, some of the cameras in this market and of this type actually dependent on price may be VGA or XVGA native and use interpolation for the higher resolution.

[bluebottle]

Re: Some Advice Please (Marstons)

A lot of professional video cameras these days use the MXF file format. The chips they use are HD quality capable of resolutions up to and including 4k.

An amusing incident I recall after retiring from policing and whilst running a small media business was a student protest march that I was filming. So were the police. The students didn't seem to mind me filming the march, as I had a press ID badge showing, but they didn't take kindly to the police filming them. One student, who must have been studying medicine, went up to a police officer who was filming them and said, "Can that camera be used to do a sphygmoidoscopy?" The hapless officer didn't have a clue what the student was going on about and looked at me with a look of sheer befuddlement on his face. Knowing what a sphygmoidoscopy entails, I have to admit that I could not contain my mirth and burst out laughing.