Court reporting agencies offer many different types of court reporting services. One of the first additional court reporting services to be offered was videotaping depositions.
Videotaping depositions is quite common especially in medical testimony where it is difficult for a doctor to be present at trial.
Video depositions have been greatly transformed with computer technology. There are so many different things that can be done with video depositions that were not available when attorneys first started taking video depositions.
One relatively new court reporting service to be offered with video depositions is called video synching. That is when the transcript and video are synched together, ie, each line of the transcript appears on the video in its appropriate place. Video synching requires special software which the videographers use to watch the video and make sure that the video and transcript line up correctly.
Video synching is a service court reporting companies are now offering to attorneys. In our court reporting firm, I would say, there is less than 50 percent of the videos we do that are asked to be synched. I would think that some other court reporting firms might see higher figures, and I am unsure what type of litigation would require the most video synching.
Video synching is usually required when a case is going to trial and involves trial presentation work.
However, a lot of the trial presentation companies do the synching themselves so a law firm will just order a plain unsynched video and have their trial presentation firm do the synching and clips, whatever, at the same time.