BOSTON — Salient Stills, the leader in video forensics and image enhancement, recently announced collaboration with the National Center for Media Forensics (NCMF) at the University of Colorado Denver. The program is using Salient Stills’ VideoFOCUS Pro to teach graduate students how to secure, capture, and process evidence from video samples.
“The NCMF supports innovation in media forensics with the development of new knowledge, applications, methodologies, and services through research and education,” said Catalin Grigoras, Ph.D., Director of the NCMF. “By adding tools like VideoFOCUS Pro to our curriculum, we’re expanding professional development training in video forensics for students in law enforcement and related professions.”
The NCMF program prepares students for careers in law enforcement and private sector forensics. Students graduate with a Master’s of Science degree, to support investigations of audio, video and image evidence. The 16-month program culminates with a thesis, an internship in law enforcement or the private sector, and many hours of hands-on lab work using programs including VideoFOCUS Pro.
“Through hands-on training in forensic video procedures and applications, our students keep their skills and knowledge sharp and up to date. Forensic tools like VideoFOCUS Pro help make this happen,” said Jeff M. Smith, Associate Director of the NCMF and instructor. “In addition, VideoFOCUS Pro training provides students with a better understanding of how video is produced, how videos can be analyzed effectively, and best practices for producing high-quality video segments and stills to advance investigations.”
Smith leads students through the VideoFOCUS Pro interface, and demonstrates work with sample evidence, including one recent project to capture digital CCTV footage from one of six DVRs at the NCMF and create actionable still images.
“Salient Stills offers each student a subscription license while they are in class and the NCMF has one full license in its Video Forensics Lab,” said Laura Teodosio, president and CEO of Salient Stills. “This way, students and instructors always have access to the current version of VideoFOCUS Pro, and can study how to process video under real-world scenarios.”
Designed for use by law enforcement officers and using innovative processing algorithms, VideoFOCUS Pro dramatically improves the ability to capture and export fuzzy or grainy video from videotape, CCTV systems, digital video cameras, cell phones and proprietary DVR formats. The system generates higher resolution stills and videos to help identify suspects and produce other leads. VideoFOCUS Pro is in use by hundreds of investigative agencies in over 20 countries and throughout the United States.
“Using state-of-the-art forensic video applications like Video FOCUS Pro helps streamline the analysis of evidence and quickly produce leads to identify suspects. The built-in capture and export functions are powerful and straightforward,” said Chris Jenkins, a graduate student at the NCMF.
About Salient Stills
Founded in 1997, Salient Stills is a leading video forensics and image enhancement software company. Salient Stills introduced its technology to answer the need for an efficient and effective video image enhancement solution. VideoFOCUS Pro and VF Source are video forensics solutions in use by law enforcement, security and military and intelligence agencies. For more information on Salient Stills visit http://www.salientstills.com/.
