Steno Director of Legal Solutions Joe Stephens, JD, recently hosted a live webinar walking litigation teams through Clip Cutting, the feature inside Transcript Genius that lets attorneys and paralegals cut, trim, and export deposition video clips themselves. I covered what Clip Cutting does and why deposition video matters at trial here. Now let’s look at what attendees wanted to know once they saw it in action.

The chat stayed busy throughout Joe’s presentation. Attorneys, paralegals, and legal support staff from firms across the country dug into the parts of the workflow that matter to their cases: how clips get sequenced, what happens across multiple transcripts, and what the feature's current limits are.

Building an Impeachment Sequence Across Multiple Depositions

One attendee asked whether the impeachment technique Joe demoed, using AI to surface contradicting testimony and sequence it into a line of questioning, could work across multiple transcripts at once, not just one.

Joe explained that Transcript Genius can interrogate multiple depositions simultaneously to isolate where witnesses contradict each other and surface the exact page and line citations. What it can't yet do is generate clips from more than one video in the same screen.

The workaround is a two-step process. First, use the multi-transcript interrogation to find and confirm the contradicting testimony across depositions, then go into each individual deposition to create the clips from those citations. The time savings still hold, since the discovery work across transcripts happens all at once. The clip creation itself just happens one deposition at a time.

No Bulk Upload Yet, But a Workaround Exists

Several attendees asked, if they already know the pages and lines they want, can they upload a CSV or list to bulk-create clips instead of doing it one at a time?

Clip creation in this version of Clip Cutting is manual, but Joe walked through a shortcut. By pasting a list of page and line citations directly into a prompt (for example, asking Transcript Genius to surface testimony across a specific page and line range), the tool will hyperlink straight to that testimony in the transcript. From there, clicking into the clip editor and creating the clip takes seconds. It's not automated bulk creation, but it removes the need to scroll and search for each citation by hand.

What Text-to-Video Sync Actually Unlocks

A few questions centered on Text-to-Video Sync specifically, since it's a prerequisite for Clip Cutting. One attendee asked if sync could be added to a deposition after the fact, if it wasn't ordered up front.

The answer is yes. Text-to-Video Sync can be added retroactively to any deposition Steno has already recorded video for. It doesn't need to be selected at the time of booking.

What You Can and Can’t Do Today

A handful of questions were about the edges of what Clip Cutting can currently do, and Joe was transparent about each one:

• Trial software integration: Clips don't currently sync with third-party trial presentation software like OnCue or TrialPad. Clips download as standard video files that can be brought into whatever software a team already uses at trial.
• Playback compatibility: Since clips export as standard video and audio files, playback works on both Mac and Windows, independent of whatever software plays them.
• Annotation and color-coding: One attendee asked about color-coding clips to flag opposing counsel's objections on the page and line designations. That capability doesn't exist yet, but Joe flagged it as useful product feedback and encouraged attendees to route similar requests through their account manager.

The Fastest Path Back to Transcript Genius

Toward the end of the session, an attendee asked Joe to walk through, again, how to actually get to Transcript Genius from a standard login. It's a small question, but a telling one: after nearly an hour of advanced use cases, one of the most common asks was still about the basics. Transcript Genius sits on the main dashboard after login, and depositions can be filtered by witness, case, or attorney before interrogating a transcript.

Clip Cutting is available at no additional cost for any deposition ordered with Text-to-Video Sync. For a closer look at how the feature works and why deposition video has become standard practice in litigation, read my full post.

Have a case where multi-transcript impeachment or witness prep is the priority? Reach out to your account manager, or book a demo to see Clip Cutting on your own depositions.