Investigations & evidence · dashcam and body-worn footage
Play the right thirty seconds and an argument is usually over — but only if the file still exists, still opens, and gets to the right desk in time. Erased and corrupted clips come back off SD cards and out of a camera's built-in memory, and they leave here in a form an insurer or West Midlands Police can act on.
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| What you see | What is behind it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Clips wiped off the card | Flash memory forgets nothing until something new is written on top | Take the card out |
| You drove on with the camera still recording | Every circuit of the loop eats into what is left | Power the unit down |
| The clip opens with a blank screen | A half-written file, or a worn-out card: often repairable | Stop using that card entirely |
| Protected clips the camera will not release | A proprietary wrapper only the camera understands | We open them and convert |
| A smashed or soaked bodycam | The memory chip normally survives the shell | We pull the video off the chip itself |
| A court or a loss adjuster wants it properly | Original files, a playable MP4, hashes, notes | What every case gets |
Every item gets a case number of its own the day it lands. An engineer then works out what has actually failed and tells you plainly which files have a real chance of coming back and which do not. Only then does a price follow: one figure, fixed, in writing, and it costs you nothing to see it. Nothing is charged until you say yes.
Nothing gets opened, edited or exported until we have a complete sector copy of the card or the camera's onboard memory. Locked event files are prised open on that copy. Your original comes home untouched.
Erased clips are carved out of that copy, and broken ones have headers and index tables reconstructed until an ordinary player will open them. A card is only flash, so the sooner you stop using it, the more there is left to find.
Driving-offence footage reaches West Midlands Police either through the national portal or through the force's own upload form, and it needs to go within days rather than weeks — the fourteen-day notice rule leaves no room to drift. Claims work goes out in the same bundle we build for any CCTV job: originals, a playable MP4, hash values, a note on method.
No invoice is raised until the full list of recovered files has sat in front of you and you have said go ahead. Your data comes back on media we buy new, posted at our expense, and the job is not closed here until every file has opened on your own machine.
Everything else bends; this does not: the law allows 14 days for most road-traffic offences, and inside that window a notice of intended prosecution must reach whoever the vehicle is registered to. That is the reason every force sets its own upload cut-off well inside that window, and why you should check what West Midlands Police is currently asking for before you send anything. A clip recovered on day twelve is still worth uploading. One recovered on day twenty usually is not.
Deleted is not the same as recorded over, and the image off this cab camera proved it was the first. The clip an insurer wanted had gone overnight; the card was copied before anything else was tried. Rebuilt and hashed, the footage was back inside the week and settled the claim and the HR file together.
Usually, yes — as long as it bears on the case and can be shown to be the real thing. That rests on the file as the camera wrote it, metadata nobody has touched, and a written trail of who has held it.
Two routes: the national dashcam portal, which sends your clip to the right force, or West Midlands Police's own upload page. You will need the registration of the vehicle involved and you will be asked to put your name to a statement. Do not sit on it — in most cases the keeper has to be served notice within 14 days.
Rarely. Deleting marks the space as free without erasing anything, and on a plain flash card the video stays put until the loop swings round or the next drive writes over it. Get the card out, keep the unit switched off, and it usually stays there.
Yes. What a bodycam captures of a person is personal data under UK GDPR, so you need a lawful basis, notices where they can sensibly go, a retention period you can defend, and storage that is locked down. Evidence goes the CCTV route: keep originals, hash copies, log every hand-off.
Every hour the recorder runs, more of what you need is gone, and the deadline stays where it is. Book it in now: the diagnosis is free and stays confidential.