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> 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.

I used handbrake before I was an engineer. Now I use ffmpeg

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.

Is it though? I can easily imagine a non-technical user thinking of HandBrake as "that DVD program" without understanding any of the underlying technical details or (for that matter) any of the encoding options.

I mean, HandBrake is pretty simple software if you just stick with the defaults.

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.

I'm very much on the side that Rittenhouse was defending himself when he pulled the trigger.

Furthermore, I think the prosecution has been terrible, and at times, downright malicious (trying to get a mistrial after their start witness flopped, etc).

HOWEVER I really do agree with this take. I'm fairly computer literate (sysadmin for a microscopy facility, daily drive Linux, couple years of web development under my belt) and recently spent a non-insignificant amount of time trying to create a video from a bunch of .tif files and embed them into a PowerPoint. It was not simple or easy. Working with video is always an annoying, expensive, black box. Sometimes I'd do things, and it would just come out a blurry mess. Or balloon in file size for no obvious reason.

But if he did click that button and now is trying to say that the defense might have caused the video to be converted to a lower quality then ignorance is no longer plausible.

How many excuses do people have? It seems to be widely acknowledged that prosecutors widely railroad and use unethical and even illegal tactics against defendants and that this is a problem. It also seems to be the idea that black defendants tend to be disproportionately on the receiving end of this behavior and that is a problem. And yet there's astounding difficulty connecting these things. A lot of people I've seen here and all other social media platforms seem to be hoping Kyle gets convicted and the prosecutors are not held to account because he is white and they think a black boy would have been convicted.

This is called (racist, but also) cutting off your nose to spite your face. Kyle being sent to jail by unethical prosecutors will not help the next black boy who is unethically prosecuted or wrongfully convicted.

Hold them to a high standard. Do not find excuses for them, they must be made to justify their own actions. If they are going to use technology to prosecute somebody and they don't know how the technology works, that is not an excuse it is incompetence and highly unethical at best.

> But if he did click that button and now is trying to say that the defense might have caused the video to be converted to a lower quality then ignorance is no longer plausible.

I don't understand. Are you saying that my idle speculation somehow grants positive evidence to the claim that there's been prosecutorial misconduct in the case?

The fact that you or I can identify a likely source of error doesn't mean that (1) that is, in fact, the source of error, or (2) that the prosecutor is aware of it. The rest of your post is overly wrought given the information we actually have.

No, I am not saying that.

Why would you do any conversion at all if you are to provide a "true and accurate copy" of all evidence to the defense? It's supposed to be an identical copy so the defense has the exact same evidence that the all-powerful state that has the power to put you in prison for the rest of your life does. Why wouldn't you just drag the file over to the dropbox folder shared with the defense, like every other piece of evidence that had been distributed?

This isn't just a lawyer. This is an Assistant District Attorney, officially representing the government. They, all lawyers, are trained in handling evidence and know full well what their obligations and duties are. Even if it was somehow a "mistake," it's the type of mistake that trials are dismissed over, with prejudice, and rightly so, because it potentially biases every piece of evidence the prosecution handled.

Besides, using handbrake doesn't completely change the filename, and we're not talking about appending "(1)", "(2)" or "(copy)" like an OS would do for files with the same filename in the same directory.

I used to use Handbrake all the time to put videos on my iPhone at appropriate resolution etc. Not exactly obscure

The DA was claiming that his hands were clean, that whatever problem the defense had were not the DA's office fault (although he did blame the crime lab at some point).

His last attempt at claiming clean hands was that he was too technically incompetent to do so maliciously. But that's BS. Even if he doesn't know what handbrake does, if he uses it he's using it to somehow modify it. that's not allowed defense is allowed the exact copy the DA has.

Also, I have a lot of trouble believing that anyone, having used handbrake, hasn't noticed a drop in quality in the video.

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)

Some video decoders don't like resolutions that aren't multiples of 2, 4, 16, etc. So rounding 211 to 212 is safer since the latter is an even number.

On r/law they explained it’s a technicians or special trial laptop thats preloaded with software like this.

Was it? I was listening on the radio in the car when they were searching for a laptop. I don't remember who gave it to them, but they were instructed to make sure the laptop was clean.

Also, I'm not sure that the screenshot is of the jury's laptop. Isn't it Binger's after he turned it around to show something?

Either way, doesn't matter. Someone in the DAs office fiddled with the laptop and their laptops are loaded with this software. The DA is responsible for his office. The DA is responsible that the defense didn't get the proper copy.

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.

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

The generous explanation is that it’s just a coincidence that he had handbrake installed.

The malicious explanation is that he intentionally downgraded the video quality with handbrake (or some other means) before handing over the evidence.

Keeping in mind that the video was the only thing shared with Kyle’s lawyer that was not shared via Dropbox, per his lawyer.

> The malicious explanation is that he intentionally downgraded the video quality with handbrake

The problem is that in the trial, the prosecution actually said "Our versions are much clearer". They also used algorithmic enhancements and blowups on the bad copy to show to the court.

Here's the link (https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1461034426717122572) but I remember watching this in the trial and people were commenting on it in realtime. The defense even mentioned they weren't given the copy.

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.

It sounds like the kind of thing a technically savvy person might set up as a base install for a non-technically savvy person.

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 <1s and video in question is only 4s/11mb

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.

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

Does Gmail automatically compress the video? I would presume it complains about size file first, and an inability to send it via email, and refuses to send.

It did not in my testing with a 22mb file, it directly showed up "processing" or "compressing".

The iOS mail app did the same for my test video 22mb > 458K, no questions asked. (unlike images where app lets you select resize options)

In your testing, did gmail also rename the file? Because Binger's copy, the one that was sent to the lab on a flash drive had a completely different name.

We used Handbrake at my school. Sure it's a bit more niche but definitely not unusual.

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.

Thanks for the background. I was first introduced to Handbrake as a tool for archiving DVD content. I think of ffmpeg as the technically savvy way to transcode.

>riddled with big time issues

Big-time issues or big time-issues? I read it as the latter initially but I think the former makes more sense.

Beyond the speed of the trial is the fact that it is farcical from up, down, and the sides. It should be thrown out the window by spinlaunch.

> 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 content?

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.