Pointmaker Annotation Heart of Digital Courtroom

It feels good to say you’ve just designed and installed two of America’s first all-digital courtrooms. Certainly, these laurels smell all the sweeter after dealing with some unusual challenges along the way. Imagine bringing an early-1900s courthouse up-to-date with the latest audio and video technology that’s needed to streamline today’s costly trials. Add to that the challenge of making a complex installation fully digital during a time when no single digital format is guaranteed to be compatible with another. And finally, imagine receiving a requirement that the judge, witnesses and attorneys all need to annotate a variety of digital images in order to clearly explain each exhibit in the trial, whether sourced from a laptop, document camera, or Blu-ray player, making computer-based annotation software solutions practically unusable. These are all challenges that didn’t deter Larry Heilman, president and key designer of Smith Audio Visual. In late June 2011, he and his tech-based team completed the all-digital courtroom installations for the Osage and Wyandotte county courthouses in Kansas, west of Kansas City. And he lived to tell the tale. OLD COURTHOUSE, NEW NEEDS “When older courtrooms such as this one [Osage] were built, not much attention was given to proper acoustics or sound systems to insure citizens were able to hear court proceedings,” says John K. Steelman, district court administrator for the Fourth Judicial District of Kansas. “Courtrooms were not designed to handle the technological and video needs of today’s court hearings or the media requirements of a high profile court case.” Larry Heilman of Smith Audio Visual agrees. “Like many courthouses across the country, they were never designed for audio reinforcement, let alone widescreen displays, so they can be very difficult for the systems integrator.” The lack of cable paths, electrical and structure plans – even the lack of a circuit breaker at one point that required the electrician to work “hot,” took the installation over the top as far as planning went. “It wasn’t your everyday installation for a meeting, boardroom or classroom project, but that made it exciting for us,” says Heilman. The first installation was for the Osage County Courthouse, which took Heilman’s team three weeks to complete from planning to final install --- including the development of four designs along the way. It took less time to plan and install the courthouse in Wyandotte, since many of the system requirements were the same. “Our main goal was to increase the easy use of the equipment,” he says, “which is one of the reasons we went completely with digital and high definition equipment. It may be messy to install right now, but it’s easy for the user to operate.” He says that within the legal profession, there’s a wide range of experience and capability with A/V equipment, so ease-of-use was a priority. Going all-digital was also important to invest in future connectivity. VIDEO SETUP Subtly visible in the courtroom are four 22-inch Elo Graphic touchscreens for use by the two opposing attorneys, the witness and the judge, with a widescreen projection system for jury and courtroom viewing. As it turned out, Heilman said that training the attorneys, judge and witnesses to use the equipment only took an hour in the first courtroom, and a little more in the second, mostly because there was a last minute switch in judges. His team also integrated a remote witness room to be used by special witnesses, such as children or victims of violence, who might be intimidated by talking in a public courtroom or in being face to face with the perpetrator. This room includes a video camera, a 32-inch LG LCD flat panel display, and Shure microphones and audio mixer. Another requirement was that the judge needed to control which audio and video evidence would be shown while on the fly, at which point the evidence is formally admitted to court. This solution was provided by Smith Audio Visual’s 1Touch Digital™ control and audio system. The system offers a proprietary sidebar function that the judge can easily select, which has the effect of setting up a private bench conference between himself, the two attorneys, and the witness. When the conference is over, the judge turns the sidebar function off, allowing all video and audio to pass through to the jury and courtroom. (More about the 1Touch Digital system is detailed under the audio section below.) ANNOTATION ACROSS THE COURT With the wide variety of visual evidence being presented these days in court via digital media, Heilman says the heart of the digital courtroom system is the Pointmaker CPN-5000 annotation system by Boeckeler Instruments. The new CPN-5000 model is the first HDCP-compliant Pointmaker video marker with an integrated capture, print and TCP/IP networking feature. It’s also a highly flexible scaler, capable of receiving video input in composite, Y/C, VGA, DVI-I and HDMI formats, while scaling the output in high-resolution formats up to 1280 x 1024, 1440 x 900 and 1080p. “That’s why we got the Pointmaker,” Heilman says. “It allows us to annotate from all four of the 22-inch touchscreens. This is something that no other annotation unit will allow. The outputs and control from the CPN-5000 make distribution simple.” With the Pointmaker, each user can be assigned a unique color for easy future identification as evidence is presented. The judge can mark any of the images as evidence, then capture them for future playback. Each captured image is automatically stored with an ID number, and can be printed or stored to USB memory drives or computer. The output from the CPN-5000 is separated into two channels: a program output for all to view, and a preview output that only the judge, witness and attorneys can view. “The unit is a tremendous time saver for both courthouses,” Heilman says. And of course, important parts of a full annotation system are the separately purchased Elo Graphic touchscreens. “They make the use of the Pointmaker extremely easy even for a first time user,” Heilman says. “It just took a few minutes to figure out how to use Pointmaker,” says Osage County Attorney Brandon L. Jones. “It was extremely easy. I just used my finger on the screen. It really helped witnesses be able to draw the jury’s attention to specific areas of the exhibits in my recent capital murder case.” DIGITAL AUDIO Heilman will tell you that your courtroom isn’t all-digital until the audio is also digitized, which is where he sets his team apart. “There’s a need to hear and record every voice in the judicial process, so that everyone, from the court reporter to the jury to the hearing impaired can understand what’s going on. You get this by properly mixing and powering your audio, and digital is the way to fine tune this.” In addition to providing the sidebar function mentioned above via its video distribution features (see “Video Setup”), Smith Audio Visual’s 1Touch Digital systems include full digital audio processing with complete control from a 7-inch touch screen controller. The audio for each microphone is separately processed and properly distributed to the sound system, with full feedback control and individual audio control. The distribution system also digitally provides balanced signals to the digital audio recorder, sound reinforcement, jury audio, hearing impaired features and more. “This is a huge improvement over existing audio systems,” says Heilman. Custom wood veneer cabinets for both the audio and video 1Touch Digital systems are provided to match the interior of the courtrooms. DIGITAL, DIGITAL EVERYWHERE … Smith Audio Visual digitized everything in the two courtroom systems, as well as provided every piece of equipment except the PC. Yet, Heilman laments what many systems integrators have experienced in recent days. “It used to be that analog A/V just hooked up and worked, eve