By Claudia Kokot and Joe Wanzala
Published: September 9, 2024
With the newest release of Trial Director version 2023.8.12, you can proactively minimize delays[1] that can happen when large JPG or PDF files are opened in Trial Director’s presentation mode. You can do this through a new, optional, process called batch imaging.
In a recent case, a paralegal used batch imaging to eliminate lag time when she opened a file in presentation mode. She was preparing for trial and one of the exhibits was a 13-page, 10,559 KB, PDF file. The file was made up of high-resolution photographs in the JPG 2000 format. (These kinds of photos are usually seen in radiological, MRI or CAT imaging). She noticed that when she opened the file in presentation mode, it would take several seconds to launch at all and even longer for a new page to appear when navigating from one page to another. Once she batch imaged the file using the newest version of Trial Director, the file launched instantaneously when it was opened in presentation mode and there was no lag time when moving from page to page.
The batch imaging process does not have to be applied every time you build a new case in Trial Director. Its utility will depend on the format and volume of the documents you are importing. As a general rule, with standard, smaller, text-based, PDF files of 5 to 50 pages, batch imaging won’t be necessary and will make no difference to the speed of a file opening in presentation mode. On the other hand, in cases that involve large documents, (e.g. forensic reports) or high-resolution PDF images, you could decide by first trying to open the files in presentation mode. If you notice a delay and you want to minimize it, batch imaging is the solution. Assuming enough time[2], and no immediate storage restrictions, there is no downside to utilizing the batch imaging process.
How to:
Batch imaging reduces delays in presenting large JPG or PDF files by converting PDF or JPG files (or any of the other supported file types) to single or multipage PNG (Portable Network Graphic) image files. To batch image, click on the “Batch Image Documents” icon that appears among the options arrayed across the Documents Explorer Ribbon bar. This batch imaging process is a secondary step to the document import process and runs entirely in the background (Figure 1).
Figure 1.
Document Import Process:
As part of the document import process, a panel launches automatically in the top right corner of the screen when you add documents to Trial Director (Figure 2). This panel provides a real time progress and status report on the documents being imported and shows any import errors.
Figure 2.
One of the key differences between this new version of Trial Director and Trial Director 6.8 is that rather than having documents linked to the file via a hyperlink, when documents are added, Trial Director creates an internal copy and each file is housed individually in a subfolder using a hashing algorithm to generate an alphanumeric name for each container folder (Figures 3 and 4)
Documents subfolder showing subfolders for each document (Figure 3):
Figure 3.
Imported document “D-00003” within “963a728d-6cdf-431b-8dc6-f37cadc68acc” subfolder:
Figure 4.
Batch Image Process:
Once the documents are imported click on the ‘’Batch Image Documents” icon in the Documents Explorer Ribbon Bar (Figure 1). A batch imaging progress report will appear in the same panel as the batch import panel seen in Figure 5. This is a secondary processing report above the document import progress report as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 5.
Figure 6.
The process runs in the background. Trial Director images each PDF or JPEG file stored in the document subfolder into a single page PNG file. If it is a multiple page PDF such as D-000003, the multi-page PDF will be converted into multi-page PNG files (Figure 7).
Figure 7.
Things to Consider:
One advantage besides the reduction in lag time for presenting large JPGs or PDFs is that batch imaging conforms all your documents into a single format, thus minimizing or even eliminating potential stability and performance issues. However, there is a tradeoff – by converting files to PNG format, you get stability, but you lose storage space. As shown in figures 6 and 7 above, the multipage PDF file, D-00003 was 365KB PDF. After the batch imaging process, the folder contained an additional 13 PNG files totaling 6.79MBs.
Another consideration is that the time batch imaging takes will vary greatly depending on the content and composition of the original file and the processing resources on the computer you are using. Batch imaging is not automatically applied to newly added documents. As new documents are added, the “Batch Image Documents” icon would need to be selected to apply the process.
[1] Trial Director supports a range of file types. However, users reported experiencing delays when presenting large JPG or PDF files. This happened because JPGs use a type of compression which can degrade image quality, especially for larger files. PDFs can contain graphics, text, and other elements. These attributes can require more system resources (RAM, CPU, and GPU) to render the images clearly and this problem compounds with larger, or more complex files.
[2] With large document collections consisting of large or high-resolution documents, the process can be time consuming – e.g. in the example cited in paragraph 2, it took 20 minutes to image the 13 page PDF file.