The Trial Technologist's View

Audacity – Free cross-platform audio catpure/editing

Blake Boyd — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:29:33 +0000

Audio editing is something that we run across from time to time. Sometimes it’s old cassettes or voicemail that was recorded in a digital format, but today’s job was taking the audio from a old and barely functioning digital audio recorder and exporting it to mp3.

The easiest way we’ve found over the years is to run a stereo cable from the headphone jack of your source (in this case the recorder) into the microphone jack of your computer (in this case a Macbook Pro). And that’s where the magic and simplicity of Audacity comes in.

It’s as simple as opening the program, pressing record and then pressing start on the recorder. The program will capture the audio and then has many editing options such as: Normalizing the audio, noise removal, amplifying the sound and many many more filters to help make your audio sound as good as it can. With a click of the export button you now have the files ready to burn onto CD or send via Email. Really simple.

Give it a try if you ever need to transfer or edit audio. It’s free so it can’t hurt anything, and it runs on pretty much any OS out there.

Reducing Microphone Hum

Edgar Hernandez — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 04:20:29 +0000

Today i want to share a few tips on how to reduce microphone hum. Since Microphones and microphone cables are espefially sensitive to hum picpup because of the great amplification needed for microphone level signals (few millivolts). The hummign can be caused to microphone signals because of ground loops and because of induced noise. Here are some tips to minimize microphone hum pickup:

* Use low impedance microphones (150-6000 ohms). All modern recording equipments and mixers are designed to work with low impedance microphones.
* Use microphones with balanced outputs (three pin XLR connectors). Thus kind of microphones pick up less hum than unbalanced microphones.
* Routinely check microphone cables to make sure that the shield is connected at both ends.
* Check that the screw near the XLR connector on the microphone is securely screwed in place inside microphone handle.
* Do not connect the ground on XLR connectors to the shell of the connector, because ground loop hum may occur if a grounded shell touches a metallic surface.
* Do not ground microphone juction boxes or snake boxes except through the cable shield.
* DO NOT PLACE MICROPHONE NEAR METALS…. i learned this the hard way, trust me.

Voir Dire Exhibit Board – Negligence

Blake Boyd — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:47:16 +0000

With two more trials coming up next week I went ahead and prepared some “stock boards” as we like to call them. We offer them to our clients to show the panel the actual legal definitions, rather than trying to explain from notes. We often ship these to the city we are working in and have them mounted locally as well.

While this is a Voir Dire example, using boards in litigation is effective with everything from opening statement to expert witnesses to closing arguments. With the ability to leave them laying around where the jury always gets a constant reminder of what is one them we are huge advocates of combining these with trial presentations.

Here’s an example of Negligence:

Simple Features of Adobe Acrobat

Chuck Floyd — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:11:06 +0000

Adobe Acrobat has some amazing and simple features that do not come in the free download of Adobe Reader. Probably one of my personal favorites, is the ability to combine .pdf’s, insert and extract pages as well as separate all pages into separate files. Ok, simple you say whats so amazing about that? Well from experience, I know it’s time consuming to open a document page-by-page, document-by-document. It’s convenient to combine them, and be able to scroll through all of the pages at once without having to open and close files. Also sometimes you may only want to produce certain pages, the extract pages feature then might come into play. Until next time…

Mid week Humor via video deposition

Blake Boyd — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:06:42 +0000

Stumbled across this video on youtube. I think I secretly hope this happens to Edgar someday..

This almost makes me want a Pre..

Blake Boyd — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:41:57 +0000

Why is it that the fans are the ones that always come out with the best advertisement for gadgets? And why do big corporations not take notice?

This fan submitted video almost makes me want to buy a pre.. Although I’m still sticking with the iPhone.

Soft Tissue Attorneys’ Deposition Technique [video]

Blake Boyd — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:29:58 +0000

In this example my client was able to save the expense of live testimony. At the same time, he got his demonstrative evidence of the surgery admitted, and sometimes getting this sort of evidence admitted can be an authoritative issue if you have no one in court to prove it up.

While completing some last minute synch’ing for one of the two trials that we provided litigation support for last week, I came across a great technique that I had never seen done before.

My client pulled up the doctor’s website (the deponent), where he had an animation of the surgery that was preformed waiting to be played back. The camera focused on the laptop screen and this is what the jury saw (remember it’s a 100″ screen they’re viewing this on):

The next question was:

5 Q. All right. Thank you. And the — Those slides
6 as well as the chart that you described earlier, do
7 those reasonably and accurately depict this type of –
8 of surgery and also the condition that you described for
9 us earlier?
10 A. Yes.

While it may not be on the top of your “what to do in a deposition” list, it’s wise to consider displaying your demonstrative evidence while in the video deposition.

World’s Fastest Book Scanner

Edgar Hernandez — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 06:19:35 +0000

Well, this post is more on the Techy side but very interesting. A researcher at the University of Tokyo has developed the world’s fastest book scanner, which uses a “book flipping scanning” method “that does exactly what it sounds like, digitizing 200 pages per minute.” Now imagine having your entire case file scanned in less than half the time of what it would normally take. Pricing and availability has not yet been announced.

World's Fastest Book Scanner

Medical Illustrations

Blake Boyd — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:40:40 +0000

Listening to a doctor explain a procedure is one of the most difficult topics for a jury to visualize. Any case that involves injuries, whether it be a medical malpractice suit or a car wreck benefits from a quality medical illustration or animation. DLS does not create our own medical illustrations for use in our presentations, this is a very specialized field that takes a graphic designer with an extensive medical background. We suggest our clients to use a company based out of Dallas named MediVisuals.

While I can’t attest to how many illustrations they have, I do know that I’ve never had a client make a request they couldn’t produce. The downfall of using a company such as MediVisuals is the cost, while each illustration differs in price, they are normally very cost prohibitive for smaller cases (car wrecks), but are extremely useful if your case can justify the cost.

The next time you have a case involving an injury or botched medical procedure, put yourself in a jurors shoes… Would you be able to visualize what your expert is discussing? If not, I highly recommend using medical illustrations or animations.

Introduction by Edgar

Edgar Hernandez — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:05:44 +0000

Hi, my name is Edgar Hernandez and I have been in Trial for the last 2 weeks but now I’m back for my first post. I just wanted to take a minute to introduce myself and tell a little about me and where I come from.

I’ve been working in the Trial Technology field for about 10 years now and I’ve had the privilege to work all over the Country with many great attorneys. I’m really looking forward in sharing my experiences and inside tips in this field. I’m always interested in listening to other people’s thoughts about technology and how to use it effectively in the courtroom.