Subject:Liability Issues using Sound Forge in Courtrooms ?

Posted by: Skymeister

Date:6/11/2015 1:22:02 AM

I have had sound forge crash in Superior court a few times in Trials... In a Capital Case, lives are on the line. After using Sony for years... The latest " re-register the software, run as administrator error" many people are getting has forced us to switch to iZotope Rx4 advanced for use in trial on all systems as Pro-Tools has too much baggage to drag out of the Lab.

Had a long run with Sony, but their lack of support for modern hardware (GPU) shows they may really not be in anything but the consumer market anymore. Sorry to see this.

Reading posts on this issue, this issue seems not to get resolved and each band-aid patch is causing other reported problems.

I'm sure there are great people over at Sony, but someone somewhere must have decided to allocate resources to other than their "professional" media software.

Subject:RE: Liability Issues using Sound Forge in Courtrooms ?

Reply by: Steve Grisetti

Date:6/11/2015 7:28:48 AM

You're editing audio files in a courtroom?

Also, what format of audio are you editing and what are the specs of that audio? I've used Sound Forge Studio as well as Pro on Windows 7, 8 and 10 and I've never had a crash while editing WAV or MP3 audio or even audio from a video file.

Subject:RE: Liability Issues using Sound Forge in Courtrooms ?

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:6/11/2015 12:55:44 PM

I think he's probably just recording while in the courtroom, not editing.

When i've got a 'life or death' one shot recording gig i always split the source into multiple recording devices. Back in my community theater days i'd have a couple cassette decks and a hi-fi VCR all recording the audio. Eventually the VCR got switched out for a laptop. Now it's often two laptops, and sometimes still tape as well. If space and portability is the primary concern then my small laptop and a pocket digital recorder will both run together.

What one misses the other covers. Never trust a single device.

Subject:RE: Liability Issues using Sound Forge in Courtrooms ?

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:6/11/2015 9:26:58 PM

Absolutely, anything as vital as a court case certainly should have a 'safety' recorder, maybe a solid-state recorder of some sort - and a professional-level one at that.

Pity about the SF crash. Let's hope they can get the problem/s ironed out.

geoff

Subject:RE: Liability Issues using Sound Forge in Courtrooms ?

Reply by: Skymeister

Date:6/12/2015 1:23:53 AM

Yes we use back up systems on back up systems when playing back evidence in cases. Sound forge used to be a courtroom staple for me because its sonograph/spectrographs are relatively simple for the jury to understand. Its a great visual aid.
When I fire up sound forge and once again, after numerous clean re-installs, it askes to re register and admin rights on a computer program running under admin... Thats a problem. This has popped up often on various OS 8.1 and 7-64 on MSI & Asus high end laptops. Never have this problem with iZotope 4x Advanced. I am in no way afilliated with iZotope. Izotope has the Insight program that is less buggy than sony's spectral 3 seems to be for 3D graphs as well.