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American Dynamics EDVR embedded time/date stamp

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(@duncanclarke)
Eminent Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 35
Topic starter  

We are conducting a forensics analysis of footage taken with one of these machines.
The footage is recorded as a series of JPG images.
We are trying to establish if the time/date stamp is embedded somewhere within each JPG.
Does anyone have any experience with this model?
Many thanks
Duncan


   
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(@ddewildt)
Estimable Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 123
 

Hi Duncan,

The only CCTV system I have done used a motion JPEG stream with the timestamp embedded. It was not this particular system, however it was recorded in HEX as the number of seconds since the 1st of January 1960 (yes 1960, not 1970 as we all initially suspected).

A colleague of mine discovered this by playing the footage in the video player and using a debugger to see what values were changing as he stepped through the execution. He really went all out as it peaked his interest, but that might be a good place to start.

HTH!


   
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(@duncanclarke)
Eminent Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 35
Topic starter  

Thanks, ddewildt - that could be the clue I'm looking for.
Much appreciated.


   
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(@bs531)
Active Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 10
 

I recently analyzed one of these systems. The date/time information is not stored in the jpeg itself. It is stored in a header file that is linked to the image. If you export an image from the EDVR unit the header information is then stored in the exif data of the resulting JPEG. This exif information can be viewed using kuso exif viewer. If you pulled the drive and ran a file carver against it, I dont know of a way to get the date/time information for a specific image. American Dynamics engineering staff was very helpful and answered a lot of very specific technical questions for me.


   
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(@duncanclarke)
Eminent Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 35
Topic starter  

bs531
Thanks - I tried phoning American Dynamics in both the UK and USA today - I drew a total blank with both - none of them had the faintest idea what I could possibly be talking about. They did give me an 0800 (uk) number, but it turned out to be some sort of "party" line.
I've opened the images with Irfan and Exif Pro, but none shows any date/time whatsoever.
We aren't able to export directly from the unit, as we have had to recover a lot (millions) of deleted files.
Thanks
Duncan


   
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(@bs531)
Active Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 10
 

I was not able to get an engineer on the phone either. When I started asking questions that the support staff couldnt answer they gave me an email address to send all of my questions to. They then forwarded it to the engineers that could answer my questions.

When I recovered images directly from the disk I was not able to get the date/time information either. I think your best be would be to image the hard drive, restore it to another drive, and run the system from the restored drive. It will start to record when you turn the EDVR on but if you hold the stop button on the front of the unit it will stop recording. Im not sure what your looking for but since it is a proprietary OS and file system it is difficult to recover anything useful without using the EDVR interface.


   
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