Litigation Support

Automated Transcript Synchronization - Sanction II

By Blake Boyd

A while back Verdict Systems added a feature in Sanction II that allows you - the end user - to synch your video depositions online. This is not a new feature to presentation software packages; inData has their own version, which is called TimeCoder Pro, even the slightly popular Visionary has an online synch application, and the biggest powerhouse is YesLaw (which I believe is who Verdict Systems is farming their synch to).

In the past we have used YesLaw and were satisfied with the quality of work for the first year, then it went downhill. After a couple embarrassing moments in trial due to poor Q/C we switched Litigation Dynamics to synching all of our clients video’s in-house in order to provide the utmost quality.

Last Thursday I began working with a new client that had all of their video synched online. I was given a hard drive loaded with over 100 hours of video, which was presumed to be synched to 99% accuracy as it states on the synch’ing companies website….

Until we started making clips. We’ve estimated that on average the starting and ending points are around 1 second off. You might be thinking that 1 second is not that big of a gap, but think about how many words you can say in a second.. try “one-Mississippi”. And that’s just the average, sometimes the stamp is right on, sometimes it’s off by 2 seconds or more! It’s very embarrassing when the transcript is showing line 12 when the actual testimony is halfway through line 11.

We’ve spent hours Q/C’ing all of the video, but I’m still nervous that it will be noticeable when we start playing video tomorrow. They might have just been having a bad day when they synch’d these videos (or are had some false advertising and were actually using software based synch and not hand synch), but having a bad day unfortunately isn’t acceptable when the product is showing in a courtroom.

My word of advice is to make sure and choose carefully when you’re looking to have your next video synched!

Full post as published by The Trial Technologist's View on May 27, 2008 (boomark / email).