By Michael G. Gay
In my last article (Digital Video, Part I, May 2006 JCR), my intent was to communicate the relevance of digital video in today’s legal video market. I also presented a brief discussion of the most common types of digital video cameras being used by contemporary legal videographers.
This article is written as a general discussion on some of the new aspects of digital video that legal videographers will encounter when they enter the realm of digital recording. What transpires after a deposition has been videotaped is commonly referred to as postproduction. In the world of legal video, the most common postproduction task is duplication, such as making additional copies of the originally taped deposition. In the world of digital video, post production not only has become more of a necessity, but also has become a viable way of producing additional revenues.
From day one in the legal video business, I have been a firm believer in redundancy.
Whenever I go out to record a deposition, I have two of everything. I carry spare audio and video cables, extra microphones and batteries, spare headphones, a spare microphone mixer, and, most important, a back-up video camera. Carrying this redundant equipment is my insurance policy. If I encounter an equipment malfunction once the technical problem is isolated and identified, I can usually fix the problem quickly by replacing the faulty item.
In addition to carrying these spare items, I also perform another aspect of redundancy, I consider it the most important act of due diligence. When recording a deposition, I always make a simultaneous video recording on a redundant recording device, such as a back-up videocassette recorder. Making two original recording at the same time not only is a very important precautionary measure, but also usually eliminates the need for postproduction. This method is an efficient way to record depositions. It can sometimes impress attorneys, when both the taking attorney and the opposing counsel can leave with an original VHS recording at the end of a deposition. In most cases, there isn’t any additional work to be done after the deposition is recorded. Normally, there isn’t any postproduction.
However in the world of digital legal video, it is quite different. The days of just handing over videocassettes you recorded onsite to attorneys are slowly coming to an end. Digital video has brought about remarkable quality enhancements and has also ushered in additional business opportunities for legal videographers. Digital is not as easy or efficient as recording in the analog format, but these new opportunities represent new ways for earning additional revenue.
As previously mentioned, analog recording was the norm for recording depositions, and duplication was typically the only form of postproduction required. Usually, the only question that was asked of attorneys was whether they wanted a copy of the deposition. This simplicity made postproduction quite easy because it consisted of just making additional VHS copies.
The world of digital video is not quite that simple. Digital video has brought about more opportunities for earning additional income from your original recordings. Attorneys are now requesting various new types of postproduction services, which did not exists in the world of analog video. These services include converting digital videocassettes to other forms of digital media such as DVD and CD formats and synchronization of the video with the transcripts, as well as providing various trial presentation services. Thus, when involved with postproduction, today’s legal videographer should have a thorough understanding of what the various types of digital media formats are and how the formats are used in the field of legal video. The videographers should also have a basic understanding of the intricacies of the video-to-text synchronization process, as well as being acquainted with some of the trial presentation software that is used in the discovery and trial litigation process.
A survey of the present legal video marked would probably indicate that most attorneys today are requesting final delivery of videotaped depositions on either DVD or CD. As most people are aware, both DVDs and CDs are optical storage devices that store large amounts of data on plastic discs that are physically the same size. Although both are almost identical in appearance, they are different in design. The main difference is that a DVD offers a much higher data storage capacity than does a CD.
Most of us are familiar with that technical dissimilarity; however, legal videographers need to clearly understand another significant difference between DVDs and CDs because the discs play a paramount role in digital video postproduction. This dissimilarity revolves around knowing the basic technical difference between MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, plus understanding how both of these audiovisual data encoding systems are used in legal video postproduction.
The word MPEG, pronounced M-PEG, is actually an acronym for Moving Pictures Experts Group. The group is an international organization composed of technical experts form the audiovisual and computer industries. These experts developed and are responsible for maintaining the worldwide industrial standards for the compression of digital audio and video signals. Both MPEG-1 (ISO/IEC 11172) and MPEG-2 (ISO/IEC 13818) standards are sanctioned by the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). MPEG is a well- accepted and widely used standard that is a sophisticated algorithm used for encoding both audio and video information. This process extracts redundant information in audio and video signals, ultimately compressing it and making it possible to store large amounts of digital data of DVDs and CDs.
Both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 are used differently in video postproduction. MPEG-1 is a low resolution-encoding standard currently used for producing video CDs, whereas MPEG-2 is a high resolution-encoding standard used for producing DVDs. It’s important to clearly understand which MPEG format is used to produce DVDs and which format is used to produce CDs. In addition to having a thorough understanding of that difference, it is also very important to know that MPEG-1 format is the required encoding format used predominantly by almost all video-to-text synchronization software programs. Although it is not critical to know all the technical aspects of MPEG encoding, having a basic understanding of MPEG technology should be a part of every legal videographers’ repertoire.
MPEG encoding is responsible for creating two new postproduction services: DVD production and video-to-transcript synchronization. These services did not exist in the world of analog video. However, they have created more postproduction work for legal videographers and consequently, new ways of earning additional revenue. These new postproduction services have also influenced some collateral changes within both the legal video and the court reporting industries.
The marriage between video and transcript, brought about by digital technology, ahs cause the legal video and court reporting industries to align themselves in a more harmonious way. In this amalgamation, two separate professions, which previously worked in a somewhat autonomous fashion, now find themselves relying on one another to accomplish a postproduction task that has become a frequently requested service: video-to-transcript synchronization. With the proliferation of trial presentation and other types of litigation support software becoming increasingly popular in the legal community, the demand for this service will also increase. Therefore it can be mutually profitable for both professions to establish cooperative working relationships.