Salient Stills, a leading video forensics and image enhancement software company, today announced a partnership with Forensic Telecommunications Services Ltd. (FTS), a leader in the extraction, analysis, and presentation of forensic evidence. Under the terms of the partnership, FTS is distributing and supporting Salient Stills' video forensics software, VideoFOCUS Pro, throughout the United Kingdom. As in the United States, crime scene video is becoming a major source of evidence for law enforcement in the UK.
In the 1990s, Europe, and specifically the UK, saw tremendous growth in the use of surveillance cameras by both public and private organizations, totaling more than 4 million cameras in use today. Further, there has been a similar increase in video recorded by cellular phones, while it is estimated that around 500,000 surveillance cameras are in use by private residences around London. However, video recorded during a criminal act is often damaged, noisy, poorly exposed, multiplexed, low-resolution, or shaky. Even worse, sometimes this video comes in a proprietary digital file format not easily extracted by law enforcement. Few video forensics systems address these issues, or to the level required for criminal investigation and prosecution.
"This exciting new partnership with Salient Stills, which is an acknowledged technology leader in video and imaging forensic software, is adding a prestigious video processing suite to FTS's growing forensic software portfolio in the UK," said Shaun Hipgrave, commercial director at FTS. "Fundamental to FTS's ongoing success is a significant and continued dedication to expanding our capabilities with appropriate and complementary forensic technologies. The VideoFOCUS Pro suite directly assists already heavily stretched video analysis departments to process and manage the huge volumes of CCTV and video evidence being processed every day. As the largest independent provider of cellular and e-forensics solutions in the UK, moving into the field of video and digital imaging forensics is an obvious next step."
FTS delivers specialist technical services and unique data extraction tools to a wide range of security services, police forces, legal services, and corporate clients. Through the provision of highly specialized software, hardware, and training solutions, the company also supports the activities of law enforcement and internal security agencies all over the world.
As the amount of video and image media extracted from mobile devices is expanding dramatically, FTS has also taken this opportunity to add a forensic processing service for mobile device derived and digital video evidence as an obvious partner to the company's rapidly expanding audio forensics division.
"Video forensics and video image enhancement are often viewed as complex, technically difficult processes requiring expensive hardware and specially trained personnel – none of which suits the fast-paced law enforcement and security officers who strive to work through investigations quickly and accurately," said Laura Teodosio, president and CEO of Salient Stills. "By adding video forensics and image enhancement to its arsenal of forensic evidence technology, FTS is helping UK law enforcement agencies efficiently process video evidence and leads. Salient Stills is actively expanding its dealer network and soliciting new dealers, around the world, to likewise assist their law enforcement clients."
VideoFOCUS Pro processes large amounts of video for viewing, sharing, analysis, and archiving in an efficient surveillance video analysis, forensics, and enhancement solution. Using innovative processing algorithms, VideoFOCUS Pro is an import, capture, enhancement, and editing system while preserving video integrity.
About FTS
Founded in 2000 in response to a growing need within the Law Enforcement community to access potential digital evidence which can be recovered from all telecommunications devices, Forensic Telecommunications Services Ltd. (FTS) is a world leader in the extraction, analysis and presentation of forensic evidence from mobile telephones, cellular networks and all forms of computing and mobile communications technology. For more information visit www.ForensicTS.com.
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 www.salientstills.com/.
