Investigations & evidence · in-car and body-worn cameras
Thirty seconds of clear video settles most disputes on the spot. That only helps if the clip is still on the card, still opens, and reaches the right desk before the deadline. We recover erased and damaged footage from SD cards and from the memory built into a camera, then return it in a shape an insurer or South Wales Police can work with.
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| What shows up | What has gone wrong | Do this now |
|---|---|---|
| Clips deleted from the card | Nothing actually leaves flash memory until new data lands on top | Remove the card now |
| The camera kept running as you drove home | Each pass of the loop swallows more of what remains | Switch the camera off |
| It plays back as a black screen | A file cut off mid-write, or a tired card — usually fixable | Retire that card immediately |
| Locked event files the camera keeps to itself | A vendor wrapper only that camera can read | We unpack and convert them |
| A bodycam broken or waterlogged | The chip inside usually outlives the casing | We read the video straight off that chip |
| A solicitor or adjuster needs it done formally | Originals, a viewable MP4, hash values, notes | Standard on every job |
The diagnosis costs you nothing. Every item that arrives is logged under a case number of its own, and an engineer works out what has actually failed — then tells you plainly which files can come back and which cannot. The price follows that: one fixed figure, in writing, and no work begins until you have read it and said go ahead.
Before anything is opened, exported or altered, we take a full sector image of the card or the camera's internal memory. Protected event files get unlocked on that image, never on your media. The card goes back as it came.
Deleted clips get lifted out of the image, while broken ones need a header and an index rebuilt before an everyday media player will run them. Flash is unforgiving in one way only — the earlier you stop using the card, the more remains to be found.
Video of a driving offence goes to South Wales Police one of two ways: the national portal, or the force's own upload form. Send it within days, not weeks; the fourteen-day rule for serving notice leaves no slack at all. Insurance claims leave in the bundle we build for every CCTV job: the originals, an MP4 that plays anywhere, hash values and a short note on method.
Nothing is billed while you are still deciding. A complete listing of what came off the drive reaches you first, and the invoice only follows your yes. Files travel back on media bought new for the job, return postage ours, and we do not close it here until every one of them opens on the machine you will use.
One rule with no give in it: for most road-traffic offences the law allows 14 days, and inside it a formal notice of intended prosecution must land with the registered keeper. Forces therefore set their own submission cut-offs comfortably earlier, so check what South Wales Police currently asks for before you upload. Footage recovered on day twelve is still worth sending. Footage recovered on day twenty rarely is.
Deleted and overwritten are not the same thing, and the image taken off this cab camera showed which of the two it was. The clip the insurer wanted had vanished overnight, so nothing was attempted until the card had been copied. Once it was rebuilt and hash-checked, the footage went back within days, closing the claim and the HR file at once.
Normally it does, provided it is relevant and provably genuine. Three things carry that: the file exactly as the camera saved it, metadata left alone, and a record showing whose hands it passed through.
There are two doors in. The national dashcam portal routes your clip to whichever force covers the spot, or you go direct to the South Wales Police upload page. Either way, have the other vehicle's registration ready and expect to sign a statement. Move quickly: for most offences the registered keeper must get notice inside 14 days.
Hardly ever. A delete only flags the space as reusable; the pictures themselves stay untouched. On an ordinary flash card that clip sits there until loop recording circles back or your next journey covers it. Eject the card, leave the camera off, and it generally survives.
They do. Anything a body-worn camera records of an identifiable person is personal data under UK GDPR. That means a lawful basis, signage wherever it is practical, a retention period you can justify, and storage kept secure. Treat the evidence side like CCTV: originals held, copies hashed, every hand-off written down.
While that recorder keeps writing, the clip you need is being covered over — and your deadline has not moved. Book it in. The first look is free, and it stays private.