Five Thumb Rules of Redaction

Are you looking for a video redaction software? Are you Confused about what features to look out for so that your investment is worthwhile? Let us take you through this journey via the 5 E’s. Well, we have all heard the 5 W’s of questioning, we now introduce to you the 5 E’s of Redaction. The 5 E’s explain the need and expectations of a video redaction software. This article brings out what to expect in a redaction software and the reasons behind the same.

Video Redaction has become commonplace in law enforcement agencies. With the right to information in action, It has become important to take videos and submit for their court cases to hold good. In situations where the videos become a piece of important evidence, it becomes imperative to withhold the identities of people involved in the video, especially if they are unrelated to the crime or event. Purchasing, setting up, and using a video redaction software is part of the technical team and many factors are looked into when it comes to investing for the same. We list out here the 5 E’s of a redaction software, which will give you an idea of what to look out for if you are looking out for one.

Evidencing

As mentioned earlier, it has become a well-known practice by law enforcement to wear body cameras both for their protection and for the recording of events as it happened. This recording provides them with evidence of an event or a crime while it is happening. These body-cam videos become a strong source of evidence in many situations and therefore are subjected to sharing through and via multiple sources. Once you share the video, there is no control of the evidence and therefore it becomes imperative to employ methods to protect the individuals involved in the crime, mostly the bystanders and sometimes the perpetrators themselves. Video Redaction Software comes as a very handy tool for law enforcement agencies to share evidence videos without compromising the privacy and security of the individuals involved.

Ease of Use

Not everyone is a technical expert and therefore an useful tool must also be easy to set up and use. Most of the time, the popularity of an application and its reach is far more when it is very simple and easy to use. In law enforcement agencies, there is a technical team that works on these applications and software, but if the tool is very handy for a newcomer or a non-technical person to work with it, then it reduces the pressure on the technical team as well. Indeed, some effort is always involved in learning something new, but the effort must not be too steep. Ease of use and set-up contributes to cost-efficiency in terms of having a big technical team and training them.

Effective

The redaction needs to be effective and accurate for every frame of the video. A mistake or a miss in one of the frames ends up exposing the people or objects involved thereby defeating the purpose of redaction. Effective redaction builds the credibility of the evidence shared by the agencies and also protects privacy and individuals. Many times we have found that evidence becomes unusable with blurs and redaction happening at the wrong frames and wrong individuals, therefore the correctness of redaction is very crucial. With a variety of devices and methods to capture videos, different formats of the video clippings also pose a challenge to the redaction software. Therefore a reliable and effective redaction is a key to improving the credibility of the evidence collected and the person who accumulated the same.

Efficiency

Carrying a tag of efficiency makes an application, algorithm, or software very worthy of its purpose. Why is efficiency so important? Well, we use algorithms, software applications, etc to make our job easier, faster, and more worthy. If the software used is slow and involves more manual intervention then it not only adds time that it takes in execution but also the time an individual needs to spend on learning the manual operation of the same. We might as well do it completely manually, which in some cases may end up faster!. This is where automated redaction proves its mettle. In this method, there is no manual marking or tracking involved and the redaction happens seamlessly in every frame automatically. Combined with the accuracy and effectiveness of the redaction, the efficiency of redaction takes it to a different level. It saves time, energy, manual effort and provides a result that is flawless and reliable. It will become as easy as remove your body camera, download the video, redact, and share. Easy? Yes, it does sound interesting and fast right?

Economical

Cost is what drives the market, isn't it? Well, supply and demand drive it too, but the cost is an important factor everyone considers. With agencies and departments wanting to cut costs in their operations, spending on expensive equipment or software becomes a big no-no. In extreme cases, they either end up paying a heavy price for the software or end up spending manual effort in doing the same, both again putting pressure on their budget. With videos running for several hours, inefficient methods end up very heavy on their budget and therefore very ineffective. Redaction software must be affordable and its effectiveness must be cost-efficient and time-efficient. Not all agencies have the luxury of spending heavily on their equipment and software. The software pricing must be made graded for its features and it must be made available and affordable for every level agency, small or big, funded or not.

This summarises some of the aspects to look out for when we invest in a video redaction software. Of course, there are more factors to look into the effectiveness and viability of redaction software some of which are configurability and selective redaction, but the primary E’s discuss here pretty much helps to assess the application. In this digital world, Video Redaction Software solves a bunch of problems and difficulties for organizations that rely on it. We hope that these factors will help in making it a viable option for them. So are you ready to invest and assess a video redaction software?