E-court FAQ Civil District

Each E-Courtroom system consists of the following evidence presentation equipment:

• 52" LCD screen;
• 15 or 17 inch flat panel LCD monitor at each counsel table and on the witness stand;
• counsel lectern;
• document camera/digital presenter;
• combination DVD/VCR;
  *Note: The 250th AV lectern does not include VCR capability
• dedicated lectern workstation

The document camera, workstation, and combination DVD/VCR reside within the counsel lectern. The 52" LCD Screen will either be mounted on a moveable cart or mounted on the wall depending on the courtroom.

From the lectern, attorneys will be able to present various types of evidence, from Microsoft Power Point presentations or Word documents to videos (DVD/VHS) to physical items (papers, transparencies, x-rays, as well as actual three-dimensional evidence). In turn, anything presented from the lectern is visible on the 52" LCD screen, the counsel table monitors, the witness stand monitor, and on the monitor at the judge's bench.

The E-Courtroom system is available for use by any parties that appear before the above listed Civil District or County Courts.

Travis County provides periodic courtroom training sessions. Please check the Travis County website for times and availability.

The Court’s Service Desk team members can schedule an E-Courtroom demonstration and training session. These are scheduled on Friday afternoons from 2-4pm and can be arranged by calling 512.854.8324. Once scheduled, you can check in with the receptionist on your arranged date and time in the HMS Civil Courthouse, room 327, District Judge’s Office.

We have posted an electronic version of the e-courtroom training guide as well as quick reference guides for the various courts that you may view on-line and/or download. Please use the navigation links located in the upper left corner of this page to find the guides for the appropriate court.

These files require Adobe Acrobat Reader to view or print. The reader can be downloaded free from Adobe. You are welcome to freely distribute any of these items within your organization or to other organizations. However, you may not sell or charge any fee for their distribution.

The E-Courtroom lectern workstation is standardized between each of the nine civil District Courtrooms. As such, you will find the same workstation model in each courtroom.

The E-Courtroom lectern workstation is a desktop computer equipped with USB ports and DVD-RW/CD-RW drives. The workstation uses the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system.

The E-Courtroom lectern workstation currently has the following applications and versions installed and available for use:

• Microsoft Office 2010
• Microsoft Word 2010
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
• Microsoft Excel 2010
• Internet Explorer 9
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 9
• Windows Media Player 12
• Real Player 15
• VLC Media Player 2.0
• Sanction II
• Microsoft Windows 7 Accessories

At this time, only Sanction II is available on the lectern workstations.

Yes. After logging into the lectern workstation as the shared user, you may copy files to the Shared My Documents user directory. Note: Any files copied here are viewable by anyone using the lectern workstation; playing the file directly from a flash drive or portable hard drive is recommended.

No. For security and copyright reasons, you are not allowed to install additional software on the lectern workstation.

Yes. The lectern is equipped with an 8X DVD burner/ 24X CD burner.

The lectern is equipped with a CD/DVD burner, you can use this hardware to write to CD/DVD media that you provide. The lectern workstation also has USB ports accessible from the front of the computer; you can use these to save files to flash drives and portable hard drives.

Yes. The lectern workstation has USB ports accessible from the front of the computer. If you wish to transport modified files back to your office, we recommend that you do so with inexpensive removable media, such as USB memory sticks and portable hard drives.

The USB ports are located under the DVD-RW Optical drive next to the microphone and headphone jacks.

Yes. Internet access is available from each of the lectern workstations.

The LCD display is used to display evidence from the lectern.

High Def 1080p resolution with a 30,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and a 5ms response time.

Each E-Courtroom lectern is currently equipped with a Samsung SDP-900DX document camera.

The Samsung SDP-900DX document camera provides a variety of image features, including: auto-focus, freeze, negative, color adjustment and rotation.

For additional feature details, refer to the E-Courtroom Training Guide, which is available for download here or consult the Samsung website.

The document camera's INT-EXT button allows you to set the source control for your display by toggling between the three possible input selections.

The document camera provides three display inputs - one internal and two external. The internal display input is simply a display of whatever is placed on the actual document camera. Of the two external display inputs, only the first is utilized. That external display input is what receives images from the other E-Courtroom components (the lectern workstation, an attorney laptop and the combination DVD/VCR). The second external display input is not currently utilized, and as a result, appears blank.

Annotation can only be preformed on the document itself, not on any of the images that are displayed at the various locations.

Each E-Courtroom lectern is currently equipped with a Samsung V3500 DVD/VCR system.

The Samsung V3500 DVD/VCR states support for the following media formats: DVD, VHS, S-VHS, CD, CD-R/RW, WMA, MP3 and JPEG. Although, it is recommended that the lectern PC's DVD drive be used to play DVD disks and to present digital files such as pictures, audio, and video files.

By connecting your personal laptop to the E-Courtroom system, you may output video images from your laptop to the E-Courtroom screens (the LCD screen, the lectern monitor, the witness stand monitor, the counsel table monitors and the judge's monitor. You may also output audio from your laptop to the LCD display sound system.

To connect a Laptop PC for display, attach one of two provided monitor cables to the VGA port on your laptop, then select the appropriate "PC" button, either 1 or 2, on the lectern control panel. You may need to enter a keystroke on your laptop to initiate the external video feed. (please refer to your equipment documentation).

To connect a Laptop PC for audio output, connect the lectern audio cable (attached to the monitor cable) to the headphone jack of the laptop.

After appropriate cables are connected, boot the laptop up and select the correct function key on your laptop to send the image to the displays.

Up to two laptops can be connected to the E-Courtroom lectern at one time for video and audio output.

Ultimately, connecting and disconnecting a laptop to the E-Courtroom system is the responsibility of the attorney/presenter, and not Travis County. As appropriate, Travis County staff will attempt to verify that the issue does not lie with the E-Courtroom system.