Demonstration IssueBuilder, The Part Before Part One

The IssueBuilder (Item) Properties Window Explained

Since we will be referring to the IB Item Properties window, here it is and an explanation:

Starting from the upper left.

The red rectangle indicates the Previous Item Clear options.

• What should occur to whatever is currently on the screen when this Item is processed.

The purplish rectangle indicates the Template options.

• Saving and applying templates to an Item
• Applying a template does NOTHING more than set the properties on this window.

The darker blue rectangle represents the presentation screen.

• How this Item will appear on the screen when displayed.

The items displayed in the light blue rectangle will change depending on specific item.

• If and how text will be displayed.
• Whether or not the Item Title will be displayed on the screen.

The green rectangle indicates the Video linking options.

• Used to link this Item to a specific point in a video playback.

And finally the yellow rectangle indicates the Run Next Item options.

• When this Item is processed, when should the next Item in the IB be processed.

The two buttons in the lower left will step forwards and backwards through the items in your IssueBuilder.

Please post any questions here as comments; remember, if you have a question so does someone else.  I will try to answer them as quickly as possible.

Thanks, and let’s get started.

chuck

      

Demonstration IssueBuilder

I’ve always wanted to create a better IssueBuilder (IB) than the one that I create and teach in nearly all but my shortest Visionary 8 training sessions.

That IB starts with a very simple item and gradually increases in complexity to the end.  With a nice linear flow, it is about a half dozen steps.  We aren’t going in a nice linear flow because we are going to be poking around in lots of nooks and crannies.

The problem has always been that I was doing it on-the-fly, probably in front of a room of students of varying Visionary 8 familiarity and basic computer skills. So while it presented a great teaching process, I am not sure how much learning was done.

So I started creating that IB from scratch and documenting my process.

I quickly realized that was going to create the internet’s worst blog post.  (Not really; that honor goes to Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge Essex, England.¹)

So I decided to create this epic IssueBuilder as a series of posts.

So here is my plan:

1. This post to introduce the idea and how to get the data needed to follow along.  See the end for how to get the data.
2. Next will be an explanation of the IssueBuilder Item Properties window and it’s numerous options.  We will create the skeleton of the IB so we have something to work with.  Maybe a side post on templates.
3. Then we get into the items in our IB.  There will be about twenty all together and should provide examples of everything I have seen over the more than a decade that I have been doing this.
4. The first items will display single items; headshot, image view of a transcript, a document, non-synced video and finally, a talking head.
5. The second set will be two things at once.  Headshot and transcript, transcript and document, two documents, a document and tear-out, non-synced video and image, talking head and document and finally, a talking head and scrolling text.
6. The third set is a quick run through of the default talking head, scrolling text and designation.  We will also create a non-standard version and use the Modify all CourtViewer Layout options for rapid IB item set-up.
7. The fourth set will introduce the Run Next Item options.  We will create a cascading affect of multiple pages of a document as well as simple tear-out replacement.
8. The fifth set will combine the various processes from earlier to create a fairly complex scripted audio/video item with scrolling text, document, and tear-outs with replacements.
9. The sixth set will address some more esoteric ideas; moves, global item additions, link to video frame and clip editing.
10. The seventh set will continue with additional IssueBuilder processes; the various printing options, importing and exporting, run time, and confirming items.

I will try to post one item per day to keep this moving along.

I will also try to post videos as we go along; and obviously when we are done, I will post the complete playback.

The complete IssueBuilder, as exported from the sample case will be available as soon as I reach that point.

Please post any questions here as comments; remember, if you have a question so does someone else.  I will try to answer them as quickly as possible.

Thanks and let’s get started.

chuck

      

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How to get the data – or what do I need to follow along?

You will need a registered copy of Visionary 8.  There is a free version available on our web site, www.visionarylegal.com.  You must create an account (with a valid email address) to get the download link and registration code.  You will also want the video that we will be using.  That can be downloaded from this link: VLT sample case video files.  (This executable file is nearly 500MB in size, so a high speed connection will help.)  All the other data in the VLT sample case is included in the basic installation.

1  From my copy of Douglas Adams’ The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Populate the Visionary Case Selection Screen from a File System Backup

So you’ve been a responsible, computer literate person and have been making file system backups of your computers and your computer with Visionary 8 installed has become inoperable.

What do you do to get all your Visionary cases back onto your new computer?

You know that using a Case Backup file (.vbk) is the best means of restoring a case to a new location, but you have File System backups instead.

What to do?

Step one

It’s actually quite easy to get your old cases onto your new computer.  Follow these steps and you will be operational.

Launch Visionary 8 on your new computer.

Set your data drive to your new chosen drive (most likely c:\).

Let Visionary 8 prep the drive (creates a “vs_data” directory and adds the necessary databases.)

Now copy over all the CaseID directories to the newly created vs_data directory on your new drive.

It should look like this (your cases will obviously be different):

Step two

From the Visionary 8 Case Selection screen, choose Create.

Fill in the Case Title field.

Enter the existing (from your vs_data directory) CaseID (in my example that would be “Wild1”).

Then click Next.

Visionary 8 will indicate that it found a directory for your CaseID and will use any pre-existing databases.

Click OK.

Click Next to the default import locations screen, image database and Case configuration screens.

Your case will open in the same condition it was when the File System backup process was completed.

As always, if there are any questions, please contact me at Support@VisionaryLegal.com

chuck

How to Use a Spreadsheet for Juror Questionnaires

This is a follow on to my post on Old Geeks Rule regarding setting up a spreadsheet to hyperlink to existing pdf files.

This will be more about setting up a spreadsheet to allow easy data entry and finding patterns in the jury pool.

First we need a spreadsheet.  I happen to have both Excel 2010 and 2013.  I will use 2010 to keep things more widespread.

First an overview

Why should I use a spreadsheet to track my juror questionnaires?

Good question.  This approach is obviously only useful if you actually have time to analyze their responses.  If you get the responses, go to lunch and start voir dire right after lunch; the time spent entering data is not time well spent.

Likewise, if you have twenty potential jurors, again your time is probably better spent elsewhere.

However, if you end up with 150 potential jurors, several assistants, multiple attorneys and an evening (or longer) time frame available to analyze the responses; it makes sense to set up a process to wisely use your voir dire time.

And that is where a spreadsheet to track the juror responses is useful.

The setup

Since the juror questionnaires are known before they are returned by the jurors (obviously), much of the spreadsheet can be setup beforehand.

Let’s get started.

Create a new spreadsheet called Juror Questionnaires.

Use the following column headings;

• cell A1 = Juror Sequence Number
• A unique number by jury pool, typically on the individual jury duty card.
• There may be duplicates if there are multiple pools called.
• It will match to the juror’s personal information as known to the court.
• cell B2 = Juror Number
• With luck, all the Juror Sequence Numbers will be one-to-one with this number
• cell C2 = First Name, MI
• cell D2 = Last Name
• cell E2 = Address, Street
• cell F2 = Address, City
• cell G2 = Address, State Code
• cell H2 = Address, Zip
• cell I2 = Date of Birth
• cell J2 = Age
• cell L2 = Map Location

Put questionnaire specific items in the subsequent columns as appropriate.

Here are some examples of yes/no type questions:

• Married
• Military Service
• Member of Specific Club

Examples of either/or questions:

• Gender
• Own or Rent Housing
• Retired or Employed

Some examples of multiple choice questions:

• Type of Employment
• Education Level

And range of feelings:

• Are there too many lawsuits?
• Are monetary awards too high?

I’ll add some of these to my example spreadsheet to show some code to make data entry easier and less prone to errors; as well as show how to use some built-in data mining.

(Ugh, the worst part is generating the fake data.  Fortunately, there are internet sites that will generate at least some of this fake data – my thanks to FakeNameGenerator.com.)

Excel as Data Management

Ok, so now we have our spreadsheet loaded with all sorts of nice data.  How do we use Excel for data management?

From within your spreadsheet, choose the Data menu item, then Filter.  You should now have little down facing arrows on each column header.

Examples

Find the Males over 50.

In the Gender column, click the arrow and only select Males.

In the Age column, click the arrow, Numbers Filters, Greater Than… and set the Age “is greater than” value to 50 and click the Ok button.

Here are the potential jurors that meet these criteria.

(To clear any filters, click the arrow for that column and choose the Clear Filter From option.)

Find home owners that think awards are too high.

In the Housing column, choose Own and Awards Too High column choose Strongly Agree.

For Extra Credit

What’s with cell L2?

Enter this formula in that cell “=HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE("https:\\maps.Google.com\maps?q=",E2,"+",F2,"+",G2,"+",H2,"&z=12"),"Location")”.  This formula is all one line, it breaks due to page width.

This will create a clickable link that will display the address in Google Maps.  This is handy to match juror’s abodes to nearby events.

Cool formula to calculate Age from Date of Birth:  “=DATEDIF(I2,NOW(),”y”)

Uses the DateDif formula to find the difference between I2 and RIGHT NOW, and returns years.

This is a link to the zipped spreadsheet in my Visionary Legal Dropbox account.  If that is no longer available or is non-accessible, please email Support@VisionaryLegal.com and we will try to get you a copy.  At the time the file was uploaded it was free of any known security issues.  As with all files from the internet, assume there is a problem and be proactive is your security.

Thanks for reading as this is much longer than my typical posts.

Please feel free to contact me for any issues.

chuck

More RegEx Recipes for Text Processing

Yesterday I wrote a piece on using some elementary Find-and-Replace stuff using Notepad++ for handling an issue that occasionally arises in transcript handling.

On this post I thought I'd add some real RegEx recipes for more advanced text handling.

(I will be using two programs, the first is the previously mentioned Notepad++.  It is a free, as in beer, software that I use extensively.  The other is TextPad by Helios Software Solutions.  It is only about $30 for a license, but if you need the advanced features, it is WELL worth the price.  I will indicate which recipes must use TextPad, otherwise the default is using Notepad++.)

(I will refer to these RegEx processes as recipes, meaning there is a Find portion and a Replace portion.  I will use quotes to make reading easier, but the start and end quotes are not meant to be used in the actual recipe.  I will indicate a space as <space>, since those tend to be difficult to read on line.  For example; Find: "\r\n<space>\r\n".  Also I will use "F:" and "R:" instead of using all the extra letters of "Find:" and "Replace:"  And obviously, unless noted, the quotes are NOT part of the recipes and are included solely to make it easier to read.)

Alright, first an explanation of the recipe for replacing the erroneous EOL characters from the other blog.

That recipe was F:  "\r\r\n" R:  "\r\n\r\n".
     Explanation:  Find the lonely Carriage Return followed by the correct EOL sequence (\r\r\n) and replace it with the correct EOL sequence - twice (\r\n\r\n).
     Summary:  Clean up files with this odd combination of EOLs.

Another version of this issue is a file that ONLY has Line Feed characters at the end of EVERY line.
This recipe would be F:  "\n"  R:  "\r\n"
(This explanation and summary is left as an exercise for the reader.)

The recipe to remove double-spacing is F: "\r\n\r\n" R: "\r\n".
     Explanation:  Find two ASCII EOL markers in a sequence (\r\n\r\n) and replace with a single EOL (\r\n).
     Summary:  Remove all empty lines, such as found in a double-spaced file.

Trim trailing whitespace F: "[<space>\t]+$" R:  ""
     Explanation:  Find and select any and all "+" spaces "<space>" or tabs "\t" that occur just before the end of the line "$" and replace them all "[]" with nothing.
     Summary:  Trim the end of a line of extraneous whitespace.

Now the follow on to trim leading whitespace F: "^[<space>\t]+" R:  ""
     Explanation, same as above, except "^" means the start of a line.

To find most problem non-ANSI characters use F: "[^\xd,\xa,\x20-\x7a]"
     ANSI characters are the printing characters and lower non-printing ones. The "\x20-\x7a" catches the upper problem characters.


Thanks and have a great day.

chuck

Atypical ASCII Line Breaks

WOW!  Bet I got your attention with that title!

This is a geekish post with real-world application to those importing transcripts into Visionary software.

I just received a support request that included this piece of information "This transcript does not use typical line break ASCII characters. "

I've seen enough of these to know that the issue is caused by the End Of Line (EOL) character(s).

In the PC (Windows) world, all text files are supposed to use two (non-printing) characters to signal the end of a line.  Those two characters reflect the old type-writer days (those of you too young to remember type-writers can skip past this explanation).  When the end of a line was reached on a type-writer, you returned the carriage to the first column and rolled the platen up one (or more) lines.  This passed into the personal computer world as "Carriage Return" and "Line Feed" or CR/LF to indicate the end of a line.

However, there are some groups that do not use this standard.  They follow the old unix way (shout out to my old Unix SysAdmin buddies).  These groups only use one character; the Carriage Return, to indicate the EOL.

This is what that looks like:

(I happen to use a program called Notepad++ that I have set to display all characters; that is why I can see the EOL's (and little dots for all the spaces).  Here is a link to the home page of this free - as in beer - software:  http://www.Notepad-plus-plus.org.)

And there you have the problem.

Have a great day out there.

Questions? Answers - Support@VisionaryLegal.com

chuck


What?  Are you still reading?

OK, you know who you are and you want a solution.

Well, using Notepad++, choose Search, Replace.

In the Replace tab enter (without the quotes) "\r\r\n" in the Find What field and "\r\n\r\n" in the Replace With field.  Click the radio button for Extended (\n...) and click the Replace All button.

When it finishes, all the single CR's will have been replaced by the more appropriate CRLF combination.

Of course at this point you are staring at a transcript that is double-spaced, so you can clear that with one more Search and Replace operation using "\r\n\r\n" and "\r\n".  Click the Replace All button a couple times until there are no more replacements.

Just like voting; save early and save often.

crb

Hey, I can't see my Register (or Release) button!

I know I left it here somewhere.

This happens mostly when you are trying to transfer your software from one computer to another.

You step through the process, launching the software and going to Help, Register - but you don't see the Unregister or Release Registration Code button.

What has occurred is the text in the window is too large to allow the buttons to be displayed.

For the time being, we are going to shrink the text to make the buttons visible.

We need to open the Display options from the Control Panel.

Here is one method.

1. Click the Start button and choose Control Panel.
2. Then double-click the Display option.

You should see two (or more) radio buttons that allow the changing of the text size.  We want the Default - 100% option.

(See screenshot below.)

Then click the Apply button.

Now when you step through Visionary's Help, Register process you will be able to see the buttons.

(Obviously, when you are done, you can reset the text size back if needed.)

Questions?  Answers - Support@VisionaryLegal.com

thanks,
chuck

How to transfer a case, long version

Ok, I don't have a small case, no video, etc.

How do I transfer my case?

Ok, there are several options that can make your case transfer process easier.

Your process will be a take-off on the basic process, except we will peel out some portions.  (And handle your video files in a best practices manner.)

So, on the Backup Data window, uncheck the Image files and OCR files checkboxes before clicking the Backup button.

This will create a much smaller backup file (and finish much faster).

Once this finishes, we need to use Windows copy-and-paste process to grab the remaining files.

We want to copy the following directories from within our original CaseID directory:

•  IMAGE (everything in here), you can zip this directory if that helps.
• OCR (again, everything in here), you can also zip this directory if that helps.
• VIDEO (again, everything in here), there is NO reason to zip this directory, it won't help.

These directories should be copied to your external drive.

Now on your laptop with the external drive connected, restore the case - same as before.

You will also need to copy the remaining files.

Since the case has been restored onto the laptop, you will have all the necessary directories laid out for you.

Copy (or unzip) the various files into their corresponding locations.

A tip is to keep the external drive with you, so that you do NOT need to copy the video files to another laptop in case of failure.


If there are any questions, drop us a line at Supprot@VisionaryLegal.com

thanks,
chuck

How to transfer a Visionary case to your trial laptop

Uh-oh! We're going to trial.....

Now how do I get my case from the office to the court?

I am going to make the assumption (I know, I know) that your case currently resides on your network and you want to take it to court on your laptop.

I am also going to assume that you have been following our best practices for file locations, etc.

And one more assumption, you are going to use an external drive for the transfer process.

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The basic process is to create a Case Backup file and restore that on the laptop.  Then copy over any other necessary data.

For a small case with no video:

1. On your desktop computer connected to the Visionary location on your network.
2. From the Case Selection screen, single click the specific case.
3. Either right-click and choose Backup or click the Backup button on the menu bar.
4. In the Save Case Backup File As window, choose your external drive.
1. Leave the filename to the CaseID.vbk default.
2. Click the Save button.
5. In the Backup data window; leave everything checked, do not add a password and click the Backup button.

You now have a complete case backup file on your external drive.

Connect that external drive to your laptop.

1. On your laptop with the external drive connected.
2. From the Case Selection screen, click the Restore button on the menu bar.
3. In the Open window, browse to, and select, the case back up file that you just created on your external drive.
1. Click the Open button.
4. The Restore data window will be displayed with information about the case.
5. Click the Restore button.

You are ready to go to trail.

At this point all Visionary case related changes need to be done on the laptop.

Two tips:

1. The case backup process will fail if there are people in the case during the process.
2. Do not try to save the Case Backup file to a thumb drive.  If not using an external drive; save the Case Backup file to your local computer and, when the process completes, then copy it to your thumb drive.

As always, if there are any questions, do not hesitate to send an email to Support@VisionaryLegal.com

Thanks,
chuck

How to create video clips from NON-SYNCED VIDEOOOOOOOO!

In keeping with the (ghostly) spirit of the season, here's a real treat.

Recently I was asked about playing clips in trial of a non-synced video file.

Well, Visionary 8 can do that.

Here's a quick write-up with the process.

First, use Windows Explorer to copy the video file in question to the <driveLetter>:\vs_data\CaseID\Video directory.

Then in your Visionary 8 case, use the File, Import, Video/MultiMedia File. Browse to and select this video file.  Give it a nice Description.

In the list of Other Multi-Media Files, double-click this video file to start it playing in the video window. Stop the video playback. (This step sets the active video file for non-synced video files.)

Next create an IssueBuilder.

Click on the Add Transcript Video Clip icon to bring up the Video Clip Editor window (it's the one that looks like a sheet of paper with a video camera on it).

There are several methods to set your start and stop points with the Editor.

1. As your video is playing, click the Mark In at the start and the Mark Out at the end.
2. Drag the scroll bar to the appropriate location and use the Mark In and Out buttons.
3. Type in a value for thse two points.
4. Use the (real) little up and down arrows to move the Mark In and Out points.

You can also use this to edit the start and stop points of the video clip.  The Play Start and Play End buttons play about five seconds of either the start or stop points.

(This is the same video editor that is used to trim regular (synced video) clips.)

Click the Save As New button.

Repeat as appropriate.


As always, drop me an email at Support@VisionaryLegal.com if there are any questions or comments.



chuck

How to convert a Word .doc file to a nice text file

"We received a Word.doc file from the transcriptionist, how can we use that in our legal software?"  Or worse "We go to trial on Monday and only have a Word .doc file, sync this!"

Have you ever run into this before?

We all know that exporting a Word .doc file does not always get us what we want for use in our legal software.

Recently a friend came to me with the questions above and asked what I could do.

The following write-up provides two possible solutions.

Use Words Save As process to save the files as “Plain Text (*.txt)”.  During the process choose to “Insert line breaks”, I left the other options to default.

QC this text file real good, ensure the line numbering is correct; always 1-25, no line number duplication, no missing line numbers, etc. It is MOST important for any automated process that the data going in is consistent.  GI-GO applies.

So now you have a nice text file, every line with a consistent line number but no page numbers.

Here you have two options.

One, redo the entire line numbering and insert both line numbers and page numbers appropriately.

For this option, we first need to remove all the existing line numbers and blank spaces before the text.

(Most text editors (NotePad++, TextPad, etc.) allow you to select a column of text using the Alt key and highlight process.  (I just tested it on an email and in Word; and holding the Alt key while selecting vertical text – selected a column of text.))

(You could also use a search and replace process to do this.)

Once you have all the line numbers and leading spaces removed, use the Page and Line utility that we include with the Auto-Syncer installation.  In the c:\Program Files (x86)\Visionary\Utilities directory is a program called – oddly enough - PageLineUtil.exe.

Launch that program; set the Source File, Destination File and the Page information and click the Build New File button.

Voila! You have a nicely formatted text file with line and page numbers.

Two, use a text editor that supports Regular Expressions.  (I use TextPad, as it supports the “\i” increment parameter.)

Open the text file and use Search/Replace.
Search for (without the quotes) “(\r\n1 )”
The opening and closing parens create a group; the “\r” and “\n” look for the carriage return and line feed characters; the “1 ” (the digit one with a trailing space) matches line number one only (not 10, 11, etc.).
Replace with (without the quotes) “\r\n.\r\nPAGE  \i\r\n.\1”
The “\r\n” create new lines; the “.” and “PAGE  “ adds that text as applicable; the “\i” adds an incrementing number; the trailing "\1" adds back in the group from the Search - the stuff within the parens.

YOU MUST USE THE REPLACE ALL FOR THE “\i” INCREMENTING TO WORK. IF YOU CHOOSE REPLACE, THE INCREMENTING PARAMETER NEVER GETS PAST ONE.



Personally, I would use the search and replace process because I think RegEx are gnarly.

Whichever method you choose, the most important thing in the entire process is that the text files is correctly formatted.

So there you have it, two methods to easily use transcriptionist-type files.

As a service to non-Visionary software users, I am including a link to the Page and Line Utility program mentioned above.

All rights reserved, use at your own risk, blah, blah, blah....

Visionary Page and Line Utility.

Drop me a line at Support@VisionaryLegal.com if you have questions.

chuck

Video File Issues and Visionary 8

"Arggghhh, (insert pirate joke) I get an error message that Visionary 8 cannot find the Video File for my depo.  I know its correct!"

This happens.

Here is some guidance on trouble-shooting this issue and getting resolution.

• Visionary 8 will automatically find the necessary video files if they are located in one of three places.
• In the root of any mapped drive.  So, c:\JJones01.mpg or e:\JonesJ01.mpg will both work fine, even if the Visionary case drive is q:\.  (Obviously, q:\JonesJ01.mpg will also work.)  And also, the depos need to reference the correct file name.
• In a directory named "video" at the root of any mapped drive.  Similar to above, this would be c:\video\JJones01.mpg; etc.
• Once caveat that took me quite awhile to solve, video is spelled "video".  One support client had mis-spelled it to "vidoe" and kept telling me they were following my instructions exactly.
• In a directory named "video" within the CaseID directory.  Again, this is similar to the above except there are two more directories in the path.  C:\vs_data\CaseID\video\JonesJ01.mpg would work, etc.  (Replace CaseID with the appropriate entry.)
• This third option allows you to easily store all the video files for multiple cases on an external (or network shared) drive and keep everything separated.  

Visionary 8 automatically searches all mapped drives for the existence of a directory called "vs_data" at the root of the drive.  If it finds this, it then looks for a directory that matches the specific CaseID.  If that is found, Visionary 8 will include this location whenever it is looking for EITHER video files (\video directory) or image files (\image directory).

This process allows you to store these files on one or two external drives for backup when going to trial.  With the case installed on two laptops, this would allow you to keep going even if one laptop crashes.

Two more issues that can generate this error.

The client not copying the video from the cd/dvd and removing the disk when trying to view the depo.

And finally, the video files being renamed, either by the client; or after the syncing was done, by the production shop.

Occasionally the end user's tech people will choose to rename files to a standard that they choose, thus breaking the synced depo process.

And very occasionally, the production shop will choose to rework the video files for some (probably good) reason.  Maybe they needed to re-render the files or even re-encode them and in the process changed the file names.  Without resetting the file associations, the error can occur.

Any questions?  Let me know at Support@VisionaryLegal.com .

Thanks,

chuck

Kudos to Carlos for getting me to write this up.

Video File Naming

Sorry, can't think of a snappy opening line for this post, so we'll get right into it.

First, file names, paths and maximum lengths.
     If you look around on the internet for more than one or two responses, you will find that everyone seems to have their own ideas as to file name and path lengths.
     So to start with, use your common sense.  Both file names and paths should be succinct and relevant.
     Unfortunately, the above advice will not always provide error free naming conventions.

Unless you are in a case involving George Foreman and family (six people all named "George Foreman"), you can probably get by with a nice naming convention of FirstInitialLastNameFileNumber or LastNameFirstInitalFileNumber.  Such as JJones01 or JonesJ01.   You can add the date in there if it makes sense.  Or not, since all the video files are for a single person, there is no reason to not just keep incrementing the FileNumber portion for subsequent depos.

Having done this for more than a decade, I have found that in some strange combination of circumstances, there is a lower limit on unique file names.  By that I mean that file names must be unique within "x" characters.  File names such as "JimJonesDepoDated14Aug2013TapeNumber1FileA.mpg" and "JimJonesDepoDated14Aug2013TapeNumber1FileB.mpg" will sometimes confuse the Operating System.  The result is that video playback will appear to reference the wrong file.  Besides, that file name looks bad.

Some off-the-cuff figuring seems to indicate the upper limit to maintain uniqueness is about 14 characters.  Since this situation has only occurred on computers owned by someone else (and they only contacted me for support), I have never been able to get an exact count.

Just another example of the things that we need to keep an eye on.

Have a great day.

chuck

How to implement the latest version of the Visionary Viewer 8

There you are, busily creating content for your clients with the Auto-Syncer and V-Print CR; but you are still sending out the old version of the Visionary Viewer 8.

How can you incorporate the latest version of the Viewer 8 for the best use by your clients?

It's simple, really.

Depending on which version of which of the production tools software you use; there will be one or two files to replace.

First, download the latest version of the Visionary Viewer 8 from this link.

Once the file has downloaded you may need to clear any odd permissions attached to it by your computer.  Right click on the file and choose Properties.  Some times there will be an Unblock option in the Attributes area of the General tab.  Windows sometimes applies this "Block" to files that are downloaded from the internet.

Since the file that you just downloaded is named correctly we only have to copy it to the correct location, over-writing the existing file.

So, right click on this newly downloaded file and choose Copy.

Using your favorite directory explorer program; such as Windows Explorer or My Computer, choose your c:\ drive.

Once at your c:\ drive you will need to get into the "Program Files (x86)" directory.  If you do NOT see either a "Program Files (x86)"  or a "Program Files" directory in your c:\ drive; you will need to work with your tech people to make it visible.

Once you are in this directory, open the Visionary directory.

There will be one or two directories that we are interested in:

• Viewer CD Template
• Visionary Viewer CD Template

Within each of these directories will be a directory called "Visionary Viewer".  We want to Paste the downloaded file into this directory.  You should get a warning about an existing file.  We want to over-write the existing file with this new one.

Once that has been completed, close your directory explorer and launch your Visionary software.

Now using the Layout CD/DVD from within the Auto-Syncer or using the Delivery tab from within V-Print CR; you will be delivering the latest version of the Visionary Viewer 8 to your clients.

Of course you can use the file that you downloaded to update your own version of the Visionary Viewer 8.

Following the above steps will not affect any previous work completed, any on-going jobs or any future projects.