Stopping audio feedback when sharing a video in Zoom

Working on a trial in federal court right now, and assisting with the courtroom electronic presentation. When doing the a/v setup, I learned a valuable lesson about how to prevent feedback. I had my laptop connected to speakers and monitors with a VGA cable fed through a HDMI converter to my laptop and separate audio cable - VGA will not transmit an audio signal.

I needed to confirm that I would be able to share a PowerPoint presentation in a Zoom session with a witness testifying remotely. Initially, when I tried to play a video clip in the PowerPoint I got very loud feedback - sort of like someone banging an industrial metal drum. The IT staff for the court helped me to discover a solution to the problem.

The first step was to mute both the mic and video on Zoom.

You can still play audio through the Share Screen function even if your mic for Zoom is muted.

The next step was to adjust the audio mixer for Windows so that only the feed for the 'headphones' - the port where the audio line was connected - and the sound for PowerPoint was enabled. System sounds, sound for Zoom itself, and sounds for all other applications were all muted.

. . . scroll back and forward in the Volume mixer to find other applications you may need to mute.

Finally when sharing the PowerPoint in the Zoom session be sure to click the option to share sound and optimize video.

Adding Digital Exhibit Stickers to Trial Exhibit PDFs

A developer called 'Done by 5' has a utility called Final Exhibits that will add digital exhibit stickers to multiple PDFs automatically. I downloaded and tested the trial version tonight. A key advantage of this software is that it will use the file name of the PDF as the basis for the exhibit number that is added to the sticker. So in this example, the first file in my set is named 'DX 1000.pdf'

Final Exhibits can also number exhibits sequentially. It allows you to resize only the first page of the PDF to place the sticker at the bottom in order to avoid covering text that appears on the first page.

Drag and drop the template of the sticker onto the pages to apply the stickers to all loaded PDFs. The Edit menu includes an option to delete all stickers if you have made a mistake.

After you have added the sticker, Final Exhibits gives you the option to reposition the stickers automatically if you want to expand the edges of the page to fit in the sticker. It's also possible to manually relocate the stickers on specific pages.

There's an option for page-level exhibit numbering. It also works by having the user drag and drop the preview of the number from the left pane onto one page of one exhibit.

Different colors (including an option for transparent) and shapes are available.

Thanks to Diarmuid Truax for this post which raves about Final Exhibits.

Sadly, the trial version leaves a banner across the sticker indicating that it's a trial version.

Printer duty cycles: How many pages can a printer print in a month?

When a litigation team is preparing for a trial, a litigation support professional will often be asked to select the hardware needed for a remote 'war room' set up in a hotel or leased office space. The printers you acquire for a trial may not only be put to heavy use for your trial, but they may also have been used to print out large amounts of pages for other firms which leased them previously. When you're trying to determine whether or not a printer will handle the amount of printing necessary to prepare dozens of witness binders each day for the duration of a trial, look further than just the listed page per minute rate and the paper tray capacity. In the posted specs for a printer, HP or another manufacturer should list the recommended page volume per month and the monthly duty cycle.

The monthly duty cycle is the absolute maximum number of pages that a printer can print out in a one month period.

The recommended monthly page volume is the highest number of pages the manufacturer recommends that you print within a month.

The difference between the duty cycle and the recommended page volume is similar to the difference between the highest possible speed a car can reach and the speed at which it can be regularly driven without causing mechanical problems. A passenger car might be able to reach a speed of 130 mph, but if the same car is driven frequently at 90 mph it soon becomes unreliable.

The recommended monthly page volume will be usually less than 10 per cent of the duty cycle.