MAGNET FORENSICS cMagnet DVR Examiner User Guide

cMagnet DVR Examiner
User Guide

BUYER’S GUIDE
DVR & CCTV Recovery Solutions
Your guide to understanding and evaluating today’s DVR recovery and analysis solutions to streamline your agency’s video investigations.

Introduction

Video footage can be an important source of evidence in criminal investigations. It’s estimated that video evidence is utilized in more than 80% of all criminal cases1.
That includes an increasing amount of digital video recorder (DVR) surveillance system video, which provides law enforcement with access to an objective account of events in many investigations. However, recovering footage from these systems can present challenges.
With thousands of different manufacturers, DVR surveillance systems have many unique user interfaces with complicated menu systems, varying storage capacities, and unreliable functionality, making DVRs notoriously difficult for investigators to work with. As a result, law enforcement is faced with a growing backlog of DVRs they are unable to work through because of missing passwords, damaged systems, or simply inefficient recovery processes. In addition, working with the recovered files themselves can present further challenges, with inaccurate time stamps, missing clips, and poor playback abilities.
DVR recovery tools have emerged in response to these challenges. They can help reduce time to evidence and costs while increasing investigator efficiency and case close rates. Many tools also offer an added layer of protection not available to investigators when manually recovering from DVRs: they’re forensically sound (while being easy to use).
This guide will provide you with the knowledge, tools, and insights to assess and evaluate available DVR recovery solutions to find the right solution for you and your team.

Common Challenges with Traditional DVR Recovery

When it comes to recovering video footage from a surveillance DVR, challenges can pop up every step of the way, from accessing the system to locating the clips of interest and extraction.
Gaining Access

Can you physically access the system?

In some cases, physically accessing the system itself provides an immediate challenge. They can be in unusual places, such as drop ceilings or cramped crawl spaces, and investigators are forced to spend hours manually recovering video with limited physical mobility in these tight spaces.

Is the system functioning?

Once the system has been located, the next step is to see if it is possible to recover the video using the system itself. In cases such as arson, robbery, or flood, it is not uncommon for the system to be damaged. With traditional recovery, if the DVR system is physically damaged to a point it cannot operate, you aren’t able to recover any clips present on the DVR.

Is the system password known?

This is probably the most common challenge that investigators run into when it comes to recovering video evidence from DVR systems. If the owner forgot their password, or is not able to be reached, uncooperative, or unresponsive, investigators are faced with additional roadblocks.

Locating the Video of Interest
Due to the abundance of independent DVR manufacturers, interfaces can vary wildly; some challenges include:

• Menus in foreign languages
• Poorly designed user interface
• Error warnings
• Inconsistent playback functionality
• Date/time inaccuracies

All of these potential issues force investigators to do more and can potentially create confusion and inconsistencies in the evidence.
Video Recovery
The most common method for recovering footage from the DVR system is to export to a USB flash drive. This approach presents a few drawbacks, including:

• Time Constraints: Typically, only a few clips are able to be exported at a time, as the USB drive has limited storage capacity, making large data exports tedious and time-consuming.
• Preferred File Format: Clips typically are exportedin a proprietary file format, requiring specialized playback software to view the recovered files. Investigators often resort to searching online forums and other unreliable sources to find and download the appropriate player.
• Unintentional Formatting: Data can be inadvertently modified while exporting using a USB flash drive, which may lower the overall quality of the data (compression, resolution, etc.)

Another method, although not recommended, is to record the output of the screen while playing back the video of interest. This can present several issues such as lower quality video and the fact that you are not getting the original evidence, but a picture of that evidence.
Video Playback
Another challenge when dealing with video evidence is getting recovered footage to play on your machine.
Knowing the extension of the file will provide hints as to what the next step would be, as there are hundreds of files extensions that would be approached differently.
As mentioned earlier, it is necessary to have playback software available that understands both the container and the format/codec. Just as in digital forensics, the file extension cannot always be trusted.

Implementation Considerations

When considering a solution to help facilitate digital evidence review—one that integrates many of your agency’s tools, processes, and resources—there are several implementation considerations that you should keep in mind:
Lab Infrastructure
Do you have adequate processing power, network speed, and storage to realize the full potential of video recovery and analysis? Are you currently undergoing a lab modernization effort?
Solution Operation and Maintenance
Once you have acquired your solution, have you determined who will be responsible for operating and maintaining it? These responsibilities will include important ongoing activities such as implementing security and application updates, troubleshooting hardware and software.
Security Requirements
Do you have a clear idea of who will need access to your solution and how they will be required to access it? Are they in your agency or external stakeholders? If external, how will you provide them access?
Tool Kit
Do you have the necessary tools to be successful in using your video recovery and analysis tool? Do you have a write blocker in your kit to ensure the data you are recovering is protected?

Evaluation Criteria

When having conversations with vendors and ultimately choosing the best solution for your agency, the following criteria will help you make an informed choice.

1. Does it Reduce Time to Evidence?

Speed is key to providing crucial evidence to investigators. Being able to recover that evidence in a forensically sound manner with efficiency could make or break your case. Your solution should be able to provide the ability to reduce your caseload and process evidence faster.

2. Is There an Intuitive Interface Suitable for All Users?

The ideal video recovery and analysis solution will be able to accommodate a wide variety of stakeholders, regardless of their technical abilities. The solution should facilitate recovery of many different types of DVR/CCTV systems, with tools to easily search, filter, and analyze. The ability to note evidence items of interest and add comments that can be easily shared can also help to greatly improve the speed and quality of your agency’s video evidence recovery and review process.

3. Will it Integrate with Multiple Sources in a Single Case?

A video recovery and analysis solution that only works with one source limits efficiency because you’ll still need to recover video evidence separately. Additionally, combining those sources into one case for recovery and review becomes impossible. Look for a solution that enables you to ingest and review video evidence from multiple sources together to give your investigators and other stakeholders as complete a view of their case evidence as possible.

4. Are There Flexible Deployment Options?

With the ever-changing landscape of digital video forensics, being able to recover video in the field or in a lab is even more crucial to your workflow. Being able to recover video evidence on scene will allow you to get your evidence faster. However, video evidence is not always able to be recovered on the scene, so having a lab with all the right tools will be crucial to your cases.

Business Considerations

While product features and functionality are very important, it’s also important to evaluate the vendor. Ultimately, you’re looking for a partner who will help you achieve your goals, one who is responsive and collaborative. Keeping the following attributes in mind will help you find a business partner, not simply a vendor.
Reputation
Does the vendor have a strong reputation in the complex and nuanced field of digital video forensics? Enabling video recovery and analysis in a reliable and secure manner requires a deep understanding of these nuances to ensure the integrity of the evidence and outputs.
Experience
Has the vendor implemented this type of solution for other law enforcement agencies with success? A successful implementation goes beyond the installation phase—does the vendor have a team of experts who are trained to understand and assess your agency’s needs and optimize the solution to serve them?
This is where a trusted vendor shines, and what makes the difference between a solution that offers minimal ROI to one that provides your lab with increasing returns year over year.
Proven Success
Does the vendor have relevant case studies and references to prove success? Now’s the time for the vendor to walk the talk. Vendors with successful customers should be able to provide you with references, and/or case studies that speak to results.
Rate of Innovation
How often does the vendor implement new features and add customer requests to the roadmap? If it’s frequent, you can feel confident that your chosen solution will keep pace with market demands. Be sure to ask vendors how the product team works with customers on feature requests, and if there is a feature that you’d like implemented ask if it is on the roadmap and when it will be implemented.

Now that you’ve learned about what considerations should go into the purchase of a DVR recovery solution, take a moment to learn more about how Magnet DVR Examiner checks off those boxes.
DVR Examiner provides investigators with a streamlined approach to DVR recovery, with an easy-to-use, forensically sound solution that can recover video and metadata from password protected, damaged, and even burnt DVRs, in most cases even when the data is inaccessible or intentionally deleted. DVR Examiner offers an unparalleled customer experience, allowing investigators to:
BYPASS DVR INTERFACES
Because DVR Examiner works directly with the hard drive, investigators bypass passwords and complicated menu systems to work directly with available data.
RECOVER DELETED DATA
Despite the data not being visible when reviewing footage from the DVR interface itself, often DVR Examiner can recover footage that has been overwritten, whether that be due to programmed storage restrictions, system malfunction, or intentional deletion.
EXPORT ORIGINAL VIDEO IN PLAYABLE FORMAT
DVR Examiner allows investigators to export the highest quality video—without transcoding—in both proprietary and open video format. If proprietary video is preferred, DVR Examiner offers a built-in player library
Law enforcement agencies utilizing DVR Examiner have shared the following:
“The whole program has been such a gamechanger—going from reverse engineering to having to actually try to get the DVR itself to work—I don’t even go through the menu system of the DVR anymore—I just pull the drive and let DVR Examiner do all the work”
“In more than 25 years of computer forensic investigations, I have never found such an effective solution for examining DVR Systems. DVR Examiner is constructed with a user interface that is amazingly intuitive and geared for heavy caseloads”

About Magnet Forensics

Magnet Forensics is a developer of digital investigation software that acquires, analyzes, reports on, and manages evidence from computers, mobile devices, IoT devices and the cloud used by over 4000 public and private sector organizations in over 90 countries and have been helping investigators fight crime, protect assets and guard national security since 2011.
© 2023 Magnet Forensics Inc. All rights reserved. Magnet Forensics® and related trademarks are the property of Magnet Forensics Inc. and its affiliates and used in countries around the world.
Magnet DVR Examiner
Next Steps
Book a personalized consultation today, email sales@magnetforensics.com and let us help you find possible efficiencies in your agency with Magnet DVR Examiner.
To learn more about Magnet DVR Examiner, visit magnetforensics.com/magnet- dvr-examiner
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DVR & CCTV Recovery Solutions

References

• Uncover Digital Evidence - Build Stronger Cases | Magnet Forensics
• Magnet DVR EXAMINER - Magnet Forensics

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