Ask the footage. Don't watch it.
What this looks like in practice, from the file the DA sent you to an answer you can take into a hearing.
- 01 Put it in
Whatever they sent you, put it in
Body cam footage from Axon works as it arrives — no converting, no special player, nothing to install. If five officers were there and you got five recordings, put them all in. You ask your question once and it answers across all of them, which is the case that usually eats a whole afternoon.
- 02 Leave it
Then go and do something else
It works through the recording on its own while you get on with the rest of the file. You are not sitting there watching a progress bar, and you are not paying someone to sit there either. When it is ready you can start asking.
- 03 Ask
Ask it the way you'd ask someone who watched it
Plain questions, in the words you would actually use. Was a reason for the stop given? When was he read his rights — before or after they started asking him things? Did anyone ask for consent to search, and what exactly did they say? You get an answer back rather than a place to start looking.
- ✓Ask follow-ups — each one costs seconds, not another pass through the footage
- ✓Narrow it to one recording when you already know where to look
- 04 Check
Every answer tells you where to look
Answers come back with the time in the recording they came from, so you can go straight there and see it for yourself. That is the part that makes it usable in a motion: you cite the moment, and opposing counsel can go to the same moment. And if you ask about something that never happened, it tells you that instead of producing something that sounds right.
- ✓Answers point to the moment in the recording
- ✓It shows which files it actually relied on, not everything it looked at
- ✓If it is not in the footage, it says so
What it doesn't do
Stated plainly, so you can decide with the whole picture rather than finding out mid-case.
It does not replace your read of the record
It finds things and points you to them. What matters, what is arguable, and what to do about it is your call, and it will not give you legal advice or tell you what your argument is.
Check who said it, not just when
It can get the right moment and still put the words in the wrong mouth — the officer's question attributed to your client, or the reverse. Because the timestamp is right, that is easy to miss. Where it matters who spoke, and in this work it usually does, play the moment before you rely on it.
It is not a certified transcript
Roadside audio is hard: wind, engines, radios, everyone talking at once. Names, street names and plate text are the first things it gets wrong. Treat it as a way to find things, and order a certified transcript where the record needs one.
It will not line up several cameras for you
You can ask a question across every recording from one incident, but it will not merge them into a single synchronised timeline. Working out the precise order of events across cameras is still yours.
Old CCTV may need converting first
Body cam footage is fine. Footage off a shop's or a building's old recorder often is not — those systems tend to use their own format with their own player. That needs converting to an ordinary video file first.
Common questions
- Do I have to watch the footage at all?
- Not to find things in it. You ask, and the answer tells you where in the recording it came from. Where an answer is going to decide something — particularly who said what — play that moment and confirm it.
- What if I ask about something that never happened?
- It tells you it is not in the footage. That matters, because showing something never happened — a warning never given, consent never asked for — is often the whole argument, and a tool that fills the gap with something plausible is worse than no tool at all.
- Can I keep a question to one recording?
- Yes. When you already know which recording matters, you can point the question at that one and keep everything else out of the answer.
- Does my video get sent anywhere?
- Your video and its audio stay with us and are not sent to an outside AI company. Nothing from your cases is ever used to train anyone's AI. There is more detail on our evidence handling page if you want it.
See it on your kind of material
Tell us what you're working with and we'll show you it running on something like it. Nothing to upload.