checking VRAM in DirectX

A Windows operating system uses an API (application programming interface) called DirectX to allow programs installed on your PC to work with the video and audio of your computer. You can bring up the diagnostics tool for DirectX by going to Run and entering: dxdiag

The DirectX Diagnostic Tool will have tabs for each set of monitors and speakers connected to your computer. A tab named 'Render' will display information for the dedicated graphics card on your PC. It will show the VRAM for your PC - the amount of computer memory dedicated to graphics:

The very first tip of the night on April 12, 2015 warned to never try to use Trial Director or other presentation software for a courtroom electronic presentation without confirming that your laptop has sufficient VRAM. Trust me, I know from bitter experience that video clips for deposition designations with multiple segments will not play back correctly on a laptop without sufficient VRAM. The current version of Trial Director requires a graphics card with 4 GB of dedicated graphics memory. See the specs posted here.

Use the DirectX Diagnostic Tool to check how much VRAM the monitors and projectors you are connected to will require.

Stopping Windows From Locking

There's often a good occasion to set up a laptop so that Windows will stay active indefinitely and not go into screen saver or sleep mode, and lock a user's account. For example, if a laptop is being used to display the realtime feed of the reporter's transcript during a trial, it will be necessary to keep the screen on even when there are no keystrokes or mouse movements. In Windows 11, if you have already set the power management settings to prevent the laptop from entering sleep mode, or shutting down the screen:

. . . and have unselected a screen saver option:

. . . also check under Settings . . . Sign-in options :

You'll want to to prevent Windows from requiring a new sign-in after anywhere from 1 to 15 minutes.

However, it is also been my experience that if you don't have admin rights to a PC, it may be possible for a firm to force a new login even if the above-recommended settings have been selected. Check with your firm's IT department about this issue before taking receipt of a laptop to be used for realtime in court.

Why 255 is a hard limit in Windows

You may have noticed that 255 often comes up as a hard limit in computing again and again.

A short text field in a MS Access database cannot be more than 255 characters.

It is not possible to search for more than 255 characters in the MS Word find tool.

And of course as discussed in the Tip of the Night for December 22, 2019, the number of characters in a single file path that can be accessed by Windows Explorer cannot exceed 255.

Why is 255 the numerical limit? It has to do with 8-bit computing. Compuer systems use binary code - a series of 0s and 1s to represent values. So for example, a lower case 'x' in binary code will be represented as 01111000. A combination of zeros and ones is used to represent letters and numbers. The earliest computers had 8 bits to a byte - so the most basic data blocks could have no more than 255 characters - two to the eight power, 2^8 equals 256. Modern computers can use 64-bit data blocks, which can represent a far greater number of values (2^64 equals 18446744073709552000). However, software devs often design programs so that they don't take up more storage space than necessary - and the smallest possible storage spaces are 8-bit blocks. The limit of 255 is imposed, so larger 32-bit or 64-bit data blocks are not taken up.