Your trial is looming, and you need to show the jury two short videotaped depositions.  Your trial budget is small, and the client does not want to pay for a media specialist or paralegal to show only two depositions. Various partners have commandeered all of the laptops loaded with trial presentation software.  The other partners, not being tech-savvy or even readers of the DRI Technology Committee newsletter, do not want to pay for another license just for your trial.  Not wanting to lug a VCR and television into the courtroom, you resign yourself to having your secretary read the deposition from the stand, and hoping that the jury will manage to stay awake.

Lawyers facing this and similar scenarios no longer need be stuck with 19^th-century technology for 21^st- century jurors.  You can play audio or show a videotaped deposition from your laptop, complete with synchronized transcript.  When the judge excludes sections, you can cut it out on the fly.  You can burn a CD of either video or audio, and send it to the judge to play with free, easily-available software.  You can show three-dimensional views of an object, or virtual-reality displays of a landscape (<http://www.cgphoto.com/cgphoto/vrgallery/index.html>).  Best of all, the software that will do all of this for you costs only $30.

The software is Quicktime®, and it should be on every knowledgeable attorney’s laptop.  Because the program was developed by Apple, many people do not realize that it works beautifully on Windows computers.  Certainly, we Apple fans think that Quicktime works best on Macs, but the Windows version of the software has all of the powerful features of its Mac counterpart.

Quicktime comes in two incarnations.  The basic Quicktime® Player® is free software, available at www.apple.com/quicktime.  It allows users to play video or audio, and offers such basic functions as pause, rewind, fast-forward, and sound adjustment.  The program also allows users to advance frame-by-frame, or to jump to another spot in the movie. The basic Player has no editing capabilities, however, so it is not helpful for trials.  It is most useful after you have edited your video, and need to send it to a judge or mediator as part of your presentation.  You can include on your disk the installer program (also available at www.apple.com/quicktime) to ensure that your audience can see the videos.

For editing, you need the more powerful Quicktime® Pro® software.  This $30 program offers a multitude of simple editing options that work quickly and efficiently.  Creating clips is a simple matter of cutting and pasting.  You can add a synchronized transcript to either video or audio, and export to a variety of formats. Quicktime’s flexibility makes it a good choice for many different legal projects ranging from trials to digital briefs.

Distinctive Interface

Attorneys familiar with trial presentation software will find Quicktime different in several key respects.  The first is that, instead of showing a synchronized transcript in a separate window next to the video, Quicktime displays it as a caption in the same window. You can see examples of a video with captions at this website (<http://www.webaim.org/techniques/captions/quicktime/5.php>) and examples of audio with captions here (<http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/itc/qt/movies.html>).  This format has the advantage of preventing the jury from seeing irrelevant or inadmissible parts of the transcript, but does require very precise time codes.

Another difference in, and I think advantage of, Quicktime requires a bit of technical explanation.  Trial presentation programs generally display audio/video and synchronized text by using a software protocol, known as SMIL, that plays two separate files (text and audio/video) simultaneously.   When copying a synchronized video deposition to another drive or to a CD, then, you have to copy three separate files – the video, the text, and the SMIL “wrapper.”  Because of the difficulty in dealing with three files, most programs that allow you to exclude portions of a deposition do not actually delete those portions, but simply tell the SMIL program to skip those sections during playback.

Quicktime, by contrast, allows the option of incorporating everything into a single file.  When copying or transferring Quicktime files, then, you need only worry about the one file.  Furthermore, you can omit a portion of a video deposition by actually deleting it from the file, preventing any possibility of inadvertent display of excluded material.  Of course, that Quicktime trait means that you should learn to always choose “Save As” rather than “Save,” or keep the original videotaped deposition in a secure location while you work from a copy.

A final significant difference is that Quicktime allows you to display better quality video than most trial presentation software can handle.  Because of concerns about compatibility, most trial presentation packages are written for the least complicated, oldest, and therefore lowest quality, video formats.  Quicktime, because it is first and foremost a video program, incorporates cutting-edge technology that results in higher-quality video.  

In fact, the most recent versions of Quicktime® Pro® will not allow you to edit the older video formats that most trial presentation programs use.   For that reason, I always order DVD copies of video depositions as well as the format compatible with my firm’s trial presentation program.  Then, if we need a Quicktime version for a digital brief or mediation presentation or trial display, we can have the videographer work from the DVD to create a compatible file.

Making Tracks

Quicktime® Pro® also allows you to add multiple media to a single Quicktime file.  As one experienced user (http://homepage.mac.com/michaellabay/LawTech/page3.html) describes it, “think of Quicktime as an accordion-style file folder that might include: a video deposition, a transcript, a 911 call on micro-cassette, scanned exhibits, 360 panoramic images, a Flash animated timeline, in any combination.”  Quicktime achieves this flexibility by using tracks to add media to a file.  Videotaped depositions, for example, will have a video track and an audio track that you can turn on or off at will.  Because you can add multiple tracks to the same file, Quicktime allows such techniques as choosing between different languages for the audio.

The most useful part of the program for attorneys, however, lies in the text track and chapter track.  The text track allows you to display the transcript of a deposition, using time codes to synchronize the video and text.   Once you have added a text track to a Quicktime file, you can use the “find” feature to search the transcript and jump to a particular spot in the deposition.  The “find” feature works even if you need to turn off the text track and not display it.  Because you can add multiple text tracks to a single Quicktime file, you can add a page and line number text track to the file, turn it off, and then search at will for a particular page and line.  (For a detailed description of this technique, see this website:  http://homepage.mac.com/michaellabay/LawTech/page3.html.) Chapter tracks are another way of jumping quickly to a specific spot in a deposition. You can use chapter tracks to designate where exhibits are identified, attorneys objected, or a witness makes an important admission.

As the instructions on the Apple website show, adding a text track (<http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/texttracks.html>) or chapter tracks (<http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/chaptertracks.html>) can be complicated.  Fortunately, several programs make the process much easier, most notably the free MAGpie captioning program (<http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/>).   Any skilled videographer or litigation support consultant should be able to provide a synchronized Quicktime file with as many tracks as you want.

Editing on the Fly

Once you have your final Quicktime file, using it requires only minimal computer skills.  Quicktime® Pro® allows you to display a file at various sizes, including full-screen, and to turn any tracks on or off at will.  The video and audio controls allow you to do a variety of simple color and sound corrections.  Deleting portions of a deposition that the judge excludes is a simple matter of marking and cutting.

The instructions for all of those features are in the Help files that download with the program.  You also can find tutorials and instructions on the Apple website, either at the Quicktime Pro section (<http://www.apple.com/quicktime/pro/mac.html>) or the extensive support pages (<http://www.apple.com/support/>).  If you want to explore all that Quicktime can do, check out books such as the Visual Quick Start Guide (<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321127285/qid=1129177388/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/102-6489308-2302505?v=glance&s=books>) or the Quicktime Toolkit (<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0120884011/qid=1129177551/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/102-6489308-2302505?v=glance&s=books>).

Quicktime is a classic example of a low-cost program that does only a few things and does them very, very well.  While it cannot replace a complete trial presentation program, it is a powerful and flexible program for working with video, audio, and text.  When you want to display high-quality video or audio, Quicktime may be just the simple and elegant tool that you need.

Deborah A. Ausburn is a member of both the Georgia and North Carolina bars.  She is a frequent speaker at seminars on topics regarding the legal system and child abuse.  Debbie is a member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, and the Defense Research Institute.  Her practice includes the representation of child care and youth services organizations in cases alleging harm to clients due to negligent hiring or other staff matters, and healthcare clients in medical malpractice suits.