ASSAULT charges against two soldiers could be dropped after prosecutors twice failed to play video evidence in court.

Callum Noone and Daniel Ward allegedly beat up Marius-Emilian Butnaru in the Chapel nightclub on October 8 last year.

The victim suffered only minor injuries and did not press charges, so the only evidence is CCTV footage of the alleged incident.

But the videos have failed to work in two separate hearings at Salisbury Magistrates’ Court.

Noone, of Giles Avenue, Rowley Regis, and Ward, of Picton Barracks, Bulford, do not have to plead before seeing the evidence.

Problems with playing CCTV footage in court are not uncommon, as the courts, police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) use different systems.

In Hampshire, all courts have a laptop that can run all the software used by different authorities.

But Salisbury courts rely on prosecutor’s laptops connected to a big screen or a DVD player.

On Friday, magistrates in Salisbury gave the CPS three hours to bring the footage to court.

Three copies were sent from Portsmouth by courier, but none were found to play more than nine seconds. The error meant the alleged assault could not be shown to the court.

In the end, magistrates gave the CPS another 14 days to produce working CCTV footage, but warned that no further adjournment would be given.

This gives the CPS no choice but to drop the charges if the video fails to play again.

The CPS said it used CCTV footage “routinely” and on a daily basis in court but “unfortunately in this case, the CCTV disks cannot be played on either CPS’s equipment or other court equipment.”

The case has been adjourned.

It comes after key video evidence failed to work during a trial in February in which an Army officer was accused of causing death by careless driving. The judge had to order police to rush the footage from Swindon "on blue lights".