How to Summarize Body-Cam Footage
July 2025
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3 min read
Body-worn cameras capture everything from routine interactions to even life-or-death moments. As a public defender, you already spend countless hours reviewing body-cam footage to find the moments that matter most.
With Reduct's summarizer, you can get there faster.
In just minutes, Reduct generates a timestamped summary of body-cam footage, helping you pinpoint critical exchanges and jump straight to them for closer review. Your thorough review stays non-negotiable, Reduct just makes it faster.
How to summarize body-cam footage?
1. Upload your body-cam footage
Begin by uploading your body-cam footage. You can directly drag-and-drop them from your computer or bulk import them from the web (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.). Reduct supports almost all formats, including some pretty obscure ones.
2. Get AI transcription of your body-cam footage
Once uploaded, the AI transcription will start rolling in immediately. It'll take around a few minutes to generate the full transcript, depending on the length of the body-cam footage.
Reduct never uses your footage or transcripts to train its AI. All uploads and summaries are protected with AES‑256 bank‑grade encryption. Reduct also meets SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA standards, keeping sensitive evidence confidential and admissible in court.
3. Summarize your body-cam footage
Now, click on the Interact button. You will then see the three summarization options to choose from:
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By topic: This will summarize the transcript by topic, creating themes from related content.
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By time: This will give you a bullet point summary of key moments in chronological order.
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Custom: You can enter a list of questions or events you want to zero in on, and Reduct will give you a summary, highlighting those moments from the body-cam footage.
Once you choose your preferred method, Reduct will generate an AI summary of the body-cam footage instantly, with clickable timestamps. These timestamps allow you to jump straight to the key moments in the footage so you can dig deeper, faster.
And done!
Three ways to summarize body-cam footage in Reduct
By topic:
Summarizes the transcript by grouping related content into clear themes. The AI organizes dialogue under descriptive headings and provides short summary notes for each section, helping you spot key themes in seconds.
By time:
Provides a bullet-point summary of key moments in chronological order. Reduct breaks the footage into time-based segments and gives you a short note for each one, creating a clear, easy-to-scan timeline of what happened and when.
Custom:
Question & Answer
Think of this as a focused Q&A with your body-cam footage. You can ask direct, investigator-style questions, and Reduct will search the transcript for precise answers.
You will get timestamped summary points for each question, allowing you to jump straight to the relevant moments.
By events
Use this summarization method when you already know the key incidents you want to track. Just enter a simple description of each event, and Reduct will find every instance in the body-cam footage.
It then compiles a timestamped list, giving you a clear, focused timeline of how those incidents unfolded.
For both Q&A and Events methods, you can save your prompts by checking the ‘Save custom summary to project’ option. This saves your prompts within the current project, allowing you to reuse the same set of questions or events in a different recording within the project.
Getting a summary of body-cam footage is fast and easy
Reduct’s summary helps you review body-cam footage faster. Simply upload the footage, select the summary style that matches your objective, and within minutes, you will receive a fully timestamped summary that captures the essence of your body-cam footage. Use the summary to quickly identify key moments and jump straight to them.
