PALIMPSEST

Palimpsest is a video first metadata forensics toolkit built for investigative casework, designed to extract latent metadata from images and video, perform deeper analytical passes, associate evidence with suspects, and produce exportable case packages that can survive scrutiny. Its forensic suite extends beyond ordinary EXIF extraction; it performs scene analysis through histogram and texture fingerprinting, detects persistent watermark overlays, estimates encoding lineage through compression artifact analysis, identifies probable screen recordings from device level visual cues, evaluates lighting behavior across time, and fingerprints ambient audio in order to link recordings captured in the same environment. Around that core, the application includes a file analyzer, a forensic video player with high zoom and detailed visual controls, batch ingestion, side by side comparison, duplicate detection, GPS mapping, suspect profile management, and multiple export formats spanning JSON, PDF, CSV, HTML, and Markdown.