SCOPING WITH AUDIO IN TOTAL ECLIPSE

GETTING THE FILES: To scope with audio, you need to get two files from the reporter: the .ECL (Eclipse transcript) and .WAV (audio) files. These files must have the same name (e.g. SMITH.WAV and SMITH.ECL), and be stored in the same folder on your computer.

And that's it. You don't have to do anything to "activate" the audio or “attach” it to this transcript file. Open the .ECL file as normal, and if the .WAV file is present and named properly, the audio commands will work.

If you are receiving audio files via CD-ROM, or other storage medium, you can get Eclipse to play the .WAV file directly from there. Go to User Settings/User tab/Advanced button, and set your Auxiliary path to the location of the .WAV file. This saves you from having to copy the sound file to your hard drive.

Advise your reporters not to use the underscore character when naming audio jobs. If a transcript filename has an underscore in it, the associated .WAV file may not be recognized.

SYNCHRONIZATION: In Total Eclipse version 3.2 or later, you will never have to synchronize the audio manually, due to an improvement in the way Total Eclipse links the audio to the transcript.

If you imported a transcript from another CAT system via RTF, and it has a .WAV file, you can use the .WAV file just as if it was recorded in Eclipse. You can also listen to a .WAV file that was recorded on a digital recorder or other external device. You may need to set the Starting Timecode. To do this, move the cursor to the first timecoded steno stroke in the job, and note the timecode that appears in the status bar at bottom center. Then, go to User Settings/Document tab/Timecodes button, and enter this time into the Starting Timecode text box.

AUDIO SYNCHRONIZATION IN MERGED FILES: If the reporter produces two separate transcript files, there will be two separate audio files. Merging the transcript files with Alt-R will not merge the audio files, but there are a couple of ways you can work with them. First, you can simply edit the two files separately, and then merge them when you are done with the audio.

Alternatively, you can merge the transcript files, and rename the WAV files for the section you are editing to match the name of the merged transcript. For example: your reporter produces transcript files called AM.ECL and PM.ECL. There will be audio files called AM.WAV and PM.WAV. If AM.ECL and PM.ECL are merged into a file called DAILY.ECL, rename AM.WAV to DAILY.WAV. This will allow you to hear the audio for the AM portion of the transcript. When you reach the afternoon portion of the transcript, rename PM.WAV to DAILY.WAV, and the audio synchronization will resume at that point. (You’ll have to rename the old DAILY.WAV back to AM.WAV first, though.)

LIVE SCOPING WITH AUDIO: In version 3.2.1.1 and later, you can listen to audio playback while the deposition is still being recorded! So even in a daily-copy situation, you can scope with the benefit of the audio from the reporter’s computer, listening with headphones.

You don’t even have to be in the courtroom to do live scoping with audio. To do live remote scoping, first the reporter sets their Division Interval to a number of minutes, and selects a Network path. This can be any folder both you and the reporter have access to. Copies of the transcript file will be saved there, which you can open and scope with Alt-E as usual. To have access to the audio, set your Auxiliary path to the folder the realtime job is being created in.

OTHER FEATURES: The Speed setting on User Settings/Edit tab allows you to slow down or speed up the audio. The default setting is 100; it’s a percentage. A setting of 50 would be half speed, 200 would be double speed. The speed change is done in a way that does not distort the pitch of the speaker.

Finally, the Volume Threshold setting allows you to squelch background noise. If Volume Threshold is set to anything above 0, all audio below that level will be skipped, making the deposition easier to listen to. Volume Threshold can be set as low as 1 or as high as 99. This can vary, so you will have to experiment to find the optimum setting.

by Gary Stephen Jr., Advantage Software

gary@eclipsecat.com