anyone ever prove passing by use of video of the actual transaction and not have a live person testify that they took the instrument?

Who is going to lay the predicate for your video? If it's someone completely unconnected to the transaction on the video, you might be able to do it under the TREs, but persuasively, the defense is going to have all kinds of opportunities to raise doubts that you can't rebut without the person(s) on the video there to rebut them.