Richmond Legal Video, Inc.

Digitization on CD-Rom and DVD:

While videotape was the standard recording and storage medium for many years, it is clearly no longer the most convenient mean through which to view and store videos. If you have actual video tapes (VHS, Mini-DV, DVCam, etc.) you may need to have the video contained therein digitized and burned to CD-Rom or DVD in order to make the video more easily usable.

• To play a videotape, a VCR and television/video monitor are typically required. A CD-Rom or DVD disk can be played right on your desktop pc or on your laptop - at the office, at home, or wherever you can access a computer. With your video on disk, or even subsequently copied to your hard drive, viewing your deposition is as simple as turning on your laptop.
   

• Let's talk storage. A week's worth of deposition testimony recorded on old VHS videotape requires a full document box for storage. The same amount of testimony recorded to disk can be included in a 3-ring binder, with room for another week or two to spare. Stored on a hard drive, you can have the contents of many 3-ring binders stored in a device the size of a paperback book. Multiply that for a case that includes hundreds of witnesses and that document box is just one of many dozens. A storage room dedicated solely to housing the deposition videotapes from a single case can be replaced by a single shelf of binders or a few small hard drives.
   

• When videotapes are duplicated, there is some loss of quality in creating the next generation. Digital media suffers practically no such loss, and is much less susceptible to degradation or damage over many years of storage. Your DVD is likely to look as good as the day it was produced, even ten years from now.