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!

update:I received an email from John at YesLaw. I will copy/paste the most relevant points.

Should you ever find a YesLaw Synch is off by a second, much less two, we would be happy to redo the entire job.

There is a right way and a wrong way to import synchronized transcripts into both of these programs.
Both methods seem to work, but use the wrong way and the synch will be off by one to two seconds – and gets progressively worse with increasing the number of MPEG files.

We do not use auto-sync software for our manual synch jobs. All jobs are synched and then fully QC’d by another person to ensure no one has a “bad day.”

The highlights of my response were this:

I’m not sure where they got their synch done. I’m almost positive it was NOT completed by YesLaw (or sanctions online synch), as the quality was really not up to par.

I do know that Yes was/has always been very responsive to my requests (when we started using Yes the upload program had just been released and there were many late night calls making sure the files were transferred, and issues being worked out) and out of the hundreds of videos I sent over time were 99 correct.

I do think Yes does offer the best option in hand synch’ing, since I’ve yet to see a computer synch that actually was accurate (especially here in south texas where there are heavy Hispanic and Texas accents, not even mentioning depos with a translator).

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I guess I should have mentioned in my original post that I have had a very good experience with YesLaw in the past. Although I did have problems with some videos in the past, it appears that they are very aware and concerned with Q/C and know that their quality directly reflects upon the person using their product.

With the new knowledge that all of their video is sync’d by hand, with a seperate person Q/C’ing the work, it does convince me to give them another try.

Tags: Clips, courtroom, Online Synch, Video Deposition