Acceptable Media Formats for the Butte County District Attorney’s Office

The PDF file available here is the new evidence workflow proposal from the District Attorney.  This new proposal is necessitated by our new electronic discovery to defense attorneys.  The DA is now electronically discovering all cases (Misdemeanor and Felony).  Due to this new procedure we need media files from the agencies brought to us in a different way to speed up our workflow to enter that media into our Crime Management System (DAMION). 

This is also in preparation for the future as the DA is preparing for electronic agency upload of files to us.  When electronic upload becomes a reality, the acceptable formats will remain the same.  The agencies will only need to go the website and upload the files to us.  But that is in the near future.  Here is what we need today.

The new proposal is broken down into 2 sections: Acceptable formats and the labeling of media.

Acceptable Media formats

Documents will only be in PDF format

Pictures will only be in JPEG format

Audios will only be in MP3 format

Videos will only be in MP4 format

Labeling of Media

Please separate media into their own CD disc.  Then label CD accordingly.  (Example:  All photos are burned to 1 disc.  Then the disk is labeled “Photos.”’  All audios are burned to a separate disk and labeled “Audios”.)

Exceptions

The only exception we will receive is the special “Vid mic” recordings currently being used by Paradise PD.  We will accept those files as is.

Surveillance Video Guidance

Surveillance videos need to come to us in MP4 format.  Here are several suggestions to the surveillance problem:

1. Export video from the surveillance recorder in MP4 if possible.
2. Export video from the surveillance recorder in AVI, WMV, (DVD) VOB, etc and then convert to MP4
3. Manually record off of the surveillance recorder to another recording device via RCA connectors (ie. DVD burner, DV Camera, etc) and then convert to MP4 using the irecord system.

LINKS:

Free Media Converter software:

Oxelon media converter

http://www.oxelon.com/media_converter.html

Surveillance conversion hardware:

iRecord system

http://www.irecord.com/

If you have any questions contact us at da-ishelpdesk@buttecounty.net