Category Archives: Process

Lab Notes: Pixillion Image Converter

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By Nelson Garcia and Alex Roberts

Pixillion Image Converter by NCH Software is a low-cost versatile tool designed to convert, compress, and edit images across a wide range of formats. A tool like this can be particularly useful if you receive image formats within discovery that won’t open on your computer, or if you need to convert images to a particular format to send to someone else.

For example, iPhones will commonly store pictures in an HEIC format and Windows computers do not have any built-in programs that can open these files. Pixillion can open and convert these files into other formats (like the commonly used JPG format).

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Guide: Transcribing with Shotcut

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By Nelson Garcia

Shotcut is a free, open-source, cross-platform video editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It supports a wide range of formats and resolutions including 4K. Features include subtitles, timeline editing, multiple tracks, and various effects.[1]

Subtitling in Shotcut is the focus of this post.  Through Shotcut’s subtitling feature, you can create video transcriptions. Shotcut can create, import, edit, export, render, and embed subtitles. Shotcut can also import subtitle formats such as: SRT, VTT, ASS, and SSA.  It can translate from most languages to English, and do Speech to Text subtitling in different languages. To do this it uses Whisper.[2] Shotcut also has a Subtitle burn-in feature, meaning it can embed the subtitles into the video so that they are always visible and permanently a part of the file.

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De-Duplication Software

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By Nelson Garcia

What is De-Duplication?

De-duplication, or “de-duping,” is a way to clean up your files by finding and removing duplicates. Over time, computers and storage drives collect duplicate files—whether from downloads, backups, or shared folders. These duplicates take up space and make it harder to find what you are looking for. De-duping removes duplicate files and thus frees up storage space, speeds up searches and backups, and reduces clutter.

There are different types of duplicate files. Understanding the different types of duplicates is key to choosing the right approach. 

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Guide: IPRO Eclipse Publish Case-troubleshooting

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By Alicia Penn and Alex Roberts

You may notice when in Eclipse Publish some buttons are blank or the text may look very small. Sometimes restarting the program will be enough to make the buttons populate. Another option is checking the compatibility mode for the program. The compatibility mode helps synchronize Eclipse’s display with your computer’s capabilities. Think trying to run a high-resolution game on a low-resolution computer—the quality of the graphics you experience is not as good as when you run a high-resolution game on a high-resolution computer. Fortunately, the steps to address this in Eclipse are straightforward.

First, Find the Eclipse Publish file and display its properties. Right-click on the LaunchViewer.exe file (the spinny football icon that you use to open the database), and select Properties. The Properties window will look like this, and the tab you want is the Compatibility tab. Click on it.

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Rule 16.1: A proactive e-discovery tool

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By Alicia Penn

Recently a defense team asked for help with reviewing their discovery. It was a single PDF made up of over 18,000 documents and contained no bookmarks or index. The discovery letter accompanying the production looked like this:

This letter was completely useless to the defense team trying to review the discovery. It gave no information that could be used in searching or organizing. The only thing it conveyed is that 18,686 individual pages had been produced to defense counsel. Without an index or bookmarks, there was no simple way to quickly and completely identify reports, witness statements, etc.  

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