The next generation of judges and magistrates, maybe even our generation, will cut and paste image and audio clips when they "write" their judgments. The television generation will not be satisfied with a mere piece of paper when they lose their litigation.

They will not normally ask support staff to insert a quote from the transcript of the evidence, or a transcription of a section of an Act. Instead they will probably use phrases like "insert, at 5.75 minutes, day 1 session 2 passage 10.51 minute to 12.08 minute segment"; or, " insert, at 2.07 minutes, paragraph 76 http:'//www.austlii.edu.au/.../SA/Acts/criminallawconsolidation". 

They may not even have to ask someone to do it for them. They may do it by using voice control, or by using a screen monitors which track their eye movements.

The siting of the camera inside the courtroom will raise new issues. 

I may have been mistaken, but during the video linkup to the court in Singapore, when the prosecutor was limited to two further weeks of adjournment instead of four, I thought I saw defence counsel turn, and attempt to silently reassure his clients that all was going well, by making a closed hand thumb up sign to them, a gesture which I have seen Viet Namese people use in my court. 

It was very quick, but if I did see what I thought I saw it illustrates the ways in which counsel are finding new ways to deliver non-verbal messsages inside virtual court rooms. It also illustrates that when we are in virtual courts, people in the court may unconsciously complicate the human interaction that is a normal part of a remand court. What was very interesting was that counsel looked at their faces on the monitor screen as he made his gesture, but in fact the camera was behind him, and at an angle. What his clients saw, if it was what we saw, was not their counsel looking at them, by looking at the camera, but their counsel's halfturned back as he faced their images. To me, it seemed that their presence on the large monitor made the defendants so vivid a presence in the court room that defence counsel forgot that while the camera was physically there, his clients were not.

The videotaped police interviews are already showing courts more than the triers of fact will see at trial. Whole body shots show the silent signals sent by toes and figures. Unconscious movements are captured on the tape, as well as the words and the telling pauses...head on the side, staring deep into the interviewer's eyes, wondering just how much the interviewing officer actually knows. Equally, the helplessness of the victim of the scam, the person who unwittingly bought the stolen goods, comes through in a way which written transcript does not capture. 

The camera is soon forgotten by the people in the room. But the camera, whether in a virtual court or a police video room creates a special focus, just as the physical layout of the court room creates a special focus.

Inside the court room, we do more than create a special focus which helps us get to the heart of the evidence. We also create a witness comfort zone, a witness box. Hands and feet are hidden away behind the wooden walls. Is face to face really a better way of assessing demeanour, or would we deliver better service if we created "comfort zones" with cameras, instead of creating them in wood? Will cameras be able to meet the needs of the "controlled battlefield"?

One of the interesting aspects of the Courtroom 21 video was that instead of using whole body shots, the witness was presented on a screen in a way that looked as if the witness was in a witness box. The familiarity of the view of the witness may be comforting for the judge and counsel, but does it bring that which is proved any closer to that which is true?

The nature of criminal trials has not changed in the hundred years since Mr. Justice Stephen described them as a form of warfare. Often civil trials are even more fiercely contested, as you could see in the photograph of the Estate Mortgage courtroom, where the judge faced an army of counsel bunkered in behind the computer monitors.

Much of what follows next is reasonably current information which is only of historical interest. It will be swept into oblivion by new developments. 

There are three reasons for including it.

First, if you have some knowledge of the history of software development, it is easier to solve problems when you are using the software that replaces it, for not every in it is a variable, and logic cannot always identify the constants. The only keyboard left on the keyboard for "multiply" was "* "when the Apple II and VisiCalc swept the world and replaced the calculator. Ever since, every spreadsheet has used * as the key for "multiply". 

Second, Professor Ledherer has warned us that we can expect to see counsel seeking to use material like this even in the kinds of cases which come before magistrates. As one speaker said, counsel will bring their technology baggage into the court room with them. There are people at this conference who are quietly developing the "baggage" that will be carried in. Some counsel will try to blind us with what they will call science. We will need to be able to distinguish between software creations and software recreations and imaged explanations.

Third, if you know about it, and you can see a use for it, you can tell the IT people why you want it yesterday.

Graphics and Sound 

Still images can be drawn or scanned into a vector based graphics programme such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw (eg: .gif; .cdr; .eps files). Still images can be created, dot by dot, pixel by pixel, in a photoediting package such as Adobe Photoshop or PaintshopPro (eg: .tif; .jpg; .psd files). 

Image scanners and digital cameras are usually set up to transmit files in "photodrawing mode", where the image is recorded in a pixel by pixel format. 

As well as scanning an image, as was done in the Estate Mortgage litigation, there is optical character recognition. 
As the case was not online in a public law library, Raymond Zada and I used OCR scanning to put the Fernando principles online for South Australians to read.

Sound files usually come in one two forms. 

Sound recordings record sound in a digital format, such as .wav or .au, but for longer recordings these forms are not easy to compress into manageable sizes. The computer sound card can also be instructed to produce a specific sound within its capacity. when a midi file (.mid) is played, the computer is following a set of intructions contained in a relatively small file. A midi author (many call themselves "midiots" for doing it) has to prepare each and every instruction. Midi files do not reproduce human speech very well, for the sounds are too complex for easy production of the instructions. 

This presentation contains "video" prepared using three different kinds of software. The files are large and it will take time to load them. To come back to this page after looking at each, use the 'back' button of your browser, for they are "glued" into pages where the content is illustrating a point.

1. Evaluation software: Video Screen Capture: HyperCam

This form of software captures changes as they pass across the face of a computer screen. It does not record sound. It is designed to record information rather than to communicate information. Sound can be glued around it, for example by using the html tags which create web pages, but sound cannot be attached to a particular image. Images can only come from the screen of the computer.

Bench notes- Sentencing- Video File
(This file not enabled on CD-ROM version)

2. Evaluation software: Animation of compressed images: GifConstructor

This kind of software is used to create highly compressed images fixed in layers. It does not record sound. It is designed to communicate small amounts of information in a form which appears to be mobile, using the same principles as were used by the authors of cartoons like "Felix the Cat". Sound can be glued around the images, for example by using the html tags which create web pages, but sound cannot be attached to a particular image. Only "still" images can be used, whether they are vector based or whether they are created dot by dot, pixel by pixel, in a photdrawing programme. Still images can be drawn in a vector based graphics programme such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw (eg: .gif; .cdr; .eps files). Still images can be created, dot by dot, pixel by pixel, in a photoediting package such as Adobe Photoshop or PaintshopPro (eg: .tif; .jpg; .psd files). Image scanners usually transmit in "photodrawing mode", where the image is recorded in a pixel by pixel format.

An image like this is an animated gif: 

There are limits to how much can be packed into an animated .gif, as I found when I tried to put a series of scanned photographs into animated .gif format. It can be done, but the file corrupts during final production. So I used screen capture of the preview from inside the program instead. The computer I was working on, the one I normally use in court, was not powerful enough for me to be able to quickly cut short the recording of the screen capture, and not powerful enough for me to trim off the slow ending in a video editing programme. Before you look at it, be warned: the file is enormous, and downloading it will take some time.

Constructing and previewing an animated .gif

3. Registered software: Video Editing and Production: VideoWave

This kind of software is part of a new generation of very competitively priced software. 

Sound is attached to images before the file is created, ie the video produced. 

Either still images or previously recorded moving images, the frames, are strung one after the other. More than one sound can be added, either throughout the progression or by attaching the sound to a particular image. Special effects can be created at points between individual frames. Files are produced and recorded in forms suited to storage and playback on the same computer or network (e.g. .avi files), or they can be produced and recorded in a compressed form designed for easy communication (eg .mov; .mpeg). 

No Use Notes - .mpg - 12000K
(This file not available on the conference CD-ROM.)

In .avi, the same file would be about 200M instead of 12M as it is when it is recorded in .mpg format

4. Not Illustrated: Streaming: Real Audio, Crescendo and other forms of information transport

"Streaming" is the first step along the road to integrating television and the Internet. It is an area where the new developments are breaking quickly. Instead of having to wait for the whole of a video or audio file to download, the viewer is able to watch the video, or listen to the sound, while the download is in progress.

Video or sound files are processed through software which encodes intructions for setting the file to play before the recipient downloads the whole of the file. On the Internet, basic encoders and players are distributed for free by large commercial software vendors who also sell much more sophisticated encoding products. The players are designed to run as part of major software browsers. 

These forms are not illustrated in this presentation because although the author can come to grips with basic encoders, the author has not yet worked out whether they need to be adapt to the needs of CDRom archiving, or how to do it, if this is the case. 

Other Imaging

There is other imaging. It is still cloaked in confidentiality, but within the next four years you will see it in your court room.