How do you force the hand of the defense attorney to tell you the parts he wants redacted before the day of trial?

At a pretrial hearing, notify the court that you have provided the defense with a copy of the recording and a transcript and have requested that the defense specify any objections to the content before trial so that you can edit the recording and avoid wasting the time of the court and jury during trial.

If necessary, ask the judge to set a schedule and order the defense to put their objections in writing. Most good defense attorneys will sit down and work with you.

How do you get a transcript of the video?

Well, you can transcribe it yourself- but our office has had good results with http://www.nettranscripts.com/ although it'd get pricy to do for every DWI that came into your office. I'd suggest to to the defense attorney that if he wants a transcript he should pay for the transcript.

For shorter recordings, we pay support staff to prepare a transcript. For longer recordings, we also use nettranscrits. They are less expensive than court reporters, charging by the length of recording rather than by the page. Pretty quick turnaround as well. But you do still have to do some proofreading.

As the number of recordings increases, offices will be faced with greater costs on editing and transcribing those recordings.