Blog Post
Video
I'm at the DSI conference in Las Vegas today, presenting a primer for law enforcement investigators on how video compression works and trying to answer the question of why "lossy" compression should be considered reliable for use in courtrooms.
The lack of trust in digital media compression in a forensic setting is primarily a PR issue for the media compression industry — if such an industry can be said to exist. We use terms like "lossy compression" and "predicted blocks" — terms that have relatively precise technical meaning. But these terms also have a slightly different meaning to laymen, and that everyday meaning isn't exactly reassuring if you're a judge relying on testimony compressed using a lossy compression algorithm.