Video Surveillance Formatting Requirements – A Reminder
Please remember that the Board has very specific formatting requirements for video surveillance evidence. It previously described these requirements in Subject Number 046-237. Failure to adhere to these requirements will result in preclusion of your video evidence!
Specifically, the Board requires that all video recorded submissions marked and played at a hearing must be certified by the submitting party as identical to a formatted DVD–R which is marked and submitted to the Board as evidence. The DVD–R must be formatted in WMV or AVI format. If a party fails to submit simultaneously with the video recorded material a conformed and formatted DVD–R capable of being viewed in Windows Media Player, the Board will not accept the video recorded material as part of the record, and the submitting party will be deemed to have waived the right to submit video recorded evidence on the issue raised.
It is important to remember these requirements in light of the Maffei decision from the Appellate Division, which created a number of challenges for employers and carriers seeking to introduce video surveillance as evidence. We discussed the Maffei decision in January 2017. You can click here to read our analysis of the Maffei decision.
We sometimes receive video surveillance from our clients for use in litigation that does not meet the Board’s formatting requirements without sufficient time to obtain a copy of the surveillance in the correct format. We urge you to notify your investigators, at the time of the surveillance referral, that any video footage has to be given in the format required by the Board. If you receive footage from your investigators in an incorrect format, you should IMMEDIATELY contact them to get it reformatted.
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