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HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

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Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My immediate thought. The context to that, is that the prosecutors sent a low quality video to the defense, and then late in the trial introduced a high quality video, which the defense couldn't prepare for; and there was a whole argument as to whether it was willful or not. One of the prosecutors claimed the defense's email client might have compressed the video automatically (not how it works), and claimed not to h…

> the defense's email client might have compressed the video automatically (not how it works) On the contrary, this is exactly how it works. The biggest pain point in sharing high quality photo or video content in 2021 is that every single service insists on quietly compressing or transcoding your content. Some, like iMessage, even do it inconsistently depending on things like current format and file size. To make ma…

Wouldn't it be the sender's email client or server that does the compression? The defense was the recipient.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#72
post #28

For context, today in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the prosecution (ADA Kraus) claimed that he was basically technically illiterate and basically didn't know about transcoding, not in as many words. A review of previous video testimony from PBS's live feed showed that he (Kraus) had Handbrake in the directory that he was showing the video from. That's not a normal application one would just have floating around. The b…

He may have had a forensics person load it on his machine and tell him to just use that app and click play. But your basic point is correct: clearly someone at least halfway knowledgeable worked on that file.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#73
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing has changed here. I get Blurays in mail from Netflix, rip them via MakeMKV, re-encode with Handbrake and put them on Synology NAS for later convenient viewing via Vero4k. Disk space is cheap, skipping stupid menus and previews is priceless!

Does MakeMKV have some sort of magic fairy dust that allows them to rip blu rays? It seems weird to me that a random closed source tool on the internet does this, and the fact that ffmpeg can’t do it after all these years feels really weird.

DRM

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#74
post #64
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the prosecution (ADA Kraus) claimed that he was basically technically illiterate > A review of previous video testimony from PBS's live feed showed that he (Kraus) had Handbrake in the directory that he was showing the video from So someone who is technically illiterate (let's take their claim at face value) has evidence tampering tools visible on their machine? Where's the chain of custody on the original file con…

I've been watching most of this trial. As far as I can tell there is no chain of custody for video, and no one in the courtroom seems to think this is unusual.

It's sort of astounding to me that most people don't believe that prosecutors lie or mislead constantly.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#75
post #28

For context, today in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the prosecution (ADA Kraus) claimed that he was basically technically illiterate and basically didn't know about transcoding, not in as many words. A review of previous video testimony from PBS's live feed showed that he (Kraus) had Handbrake in the directory that he was showing the video from. That's not a normal application one would just have floating around. The b…

So the speculation is that because he had free transcoding software on his desktop, that he understands transcoding?

it was one of only a very few icons on the desktop, including the folders "New Folder", "OpenOffice 4.1.6 (en-US) installation f...", "Temp", and "Final Exhibits", and the shortcuts "Coolmuster Android Backup Manager", "Format Factory", "Handbrake", "MessengerLite", "Person 1 - Chrome", and "Zoom".

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#76
post #28

For context, today in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the prosecution (ADA Kraus) claimed that he was basically technically illiterate and basically didn't know about transcoding, not in as many words. A review of previous video testimony from PBS's live feed showed that he (Kraus) had Handbrake in the directory that he was showing the video from. That's not a normal application one would just have floating around. The b…

It should be noted that according to the defense's motion for a mistrial[1] there is also a slight difference in the aspect ratio of the two video files. The high quality video is 1920x844 and the low quality video is 480x212. If you divide 1920 by 4, you get 480, which matches the low quality video. If you divide 844 by 4, you get 211, not 212. Rounding to the nearest integer doesn't explain the one pixel difference because both 1920 and 844 are divisible by 4.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/540381079/211116-Rittenhouse... (page 3)

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#77
post #28

For context, today in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the prosecution (ADA Kraus) claimed that he was basically technically illiterate and basically didn't know about transcoding, not in as many words. A review of previous video testimony from PBS's live feed showed that he (Kraus) had Handbrake in the directory that he was showing the video from. That's not a normal application one would just have floating around. The b…

One doesn't need to be a transcoding expert to use Handbrake. I'm certainly not one and use it very often as it defaults to optimal settings. I actually made a mistake months ago by changing the defaults which result in having to redo everything from scratch: I found a deal for the entire Star Trek DS9 box set and bought it to save it onto my home NAS so I could watch it with my Kodi based player. I set up Handbrake to convert to 12 bit H265 instead of 10 bit, processed a couple files, tested them OK on the PC and used these settings for all DVDs. Unfortunately only after finishing I learnt that Kodi's player doesn't support 12 bit H265 (or didn't at the time), so I had to do everything from scratch, and that was a huge pile o DVDs to convert again. Had I left the factory settings untouched, it would have worked out of the box.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#78
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not a normal application one would just have floating around. Without addressing the rest of the post: I've seen plenty of non-engineers use Handbrake. In fact, I've seen more than one lawyer use it. It occurs to me that it would actually be pretty common for lawyers to have it installed, particularly if they're reviewing and copying evidence that was delivered to them by DVD or other physical forms.

Of course you don't have to be an engineer to use it, but if he's really claiming to know nothing about encoding, that's quite the contradiction.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. In fact, I can very easily see a lawyer clicking the "fast convert" (or similar) checkbox, not realizing that doing so compromises the encoding quality. For all I know, that setting is the default.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#79
post #28

For context, today in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the prosecution (ADA Kraus) claimed that he was basically technically illiterate and basically didn't know about transcoding, not in as many words. A review of previous video testimony from PBS's live feed showed that he (Kraus) had Handbrake in the directory that he was showing the video from. That's not a normal application one would just have floating around. The b…

So the speculation is that because he had free transcoding software on his desktop, that he understands transcoding?

Here is what actually happened and the prosecution later admitted it. (they first blamed it on the defense android phone)

1. Prosecution receives the file via airdrop, direct data transfer.

2. Prosecution sends the file via gmail to the defense but it gets compressed in the process.

There are 2 ways to send a vid/pic from ios with gmail

1. from gmail app with attachment function, this pops up a window with "processing" (compresses the video, which is poorly worded imo)

2. from ios photos app > share > gmail, this shows a progress bar at the bottom with "compressing"

both ways are easy to overlook, first one is poorly worded and its a very fast process, my test vid with 25mb took the real question is, why is there no proper evidence system in place to submit and review(for all 3 parties), using gmail and dropbox sounds very questionable to me.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the speculation is that because he had free transcoding software on his desktop, that he understands transcoding?

it was one of only a very few icons on the desktop, including the folders "New Folder", "OpenOffice 4.1.6 (en-US) installation f...", "Temp", and "Final Exhibits", and the shortcuts "Coolmuster Android Backup Manager", "Format Factory", "Handbrake", "MessengerLite", "Person 1 - Chrome", and "Zoom".

Maybe I'm missing something, but none of those applications/desktop icons scream "technically savvy" person to me.
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