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The court's Digital Evidence Policy (approved May 16, 2019): non-proprietary formats that run on VLC Media Player or Windows Media Player for multimedia shown on court equipment; release of liability for parties' own equipment; text-searchable PDFs on order; media free of viruses and malware and no compressed or zipped files; motions for an exception; and the supported video and audio formats.
California > Third Appellate District > Sacramento County > Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento
SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO Digital Evidence Policy A. The Court broadly defines digital evidence to include electronic documents, spreadsheets, reports, graphics, and multimedia files. B. Parties presenting multimedia files (audio and video) to the Court for viewing on Court‐owned equipment must ensure the files are in a non‐proprietary format (MPEG, AVI, WAV) and that those files run on the following media players: VLC Media Player or Windows Media Player. Acceptable file formats are listed in Paragraph G: Supported Media Formats. Parties providing their own equipment to the Court for the viewing of digital evidence are exempt from this requirement. C. Parties providing their own equipment to the Court for the viewing of digital evidence shall release the Court from liability and waive any claims regarding damage or loss of equipment. D. The Court, in its discretion, may order parties presenting documents, spreadsheets, reports, etc. in electronic form to provide those files in a portable document format (PDF) that is text searchable. E. Parties must ensure that the media containing the digital evidence media (e.g. flash drives, DVDs, etc.) is free of computer viruses and malware. Parties must make reasonable efforts to take precautions against the contamination of their computer systems and files by software viruses, worms or other malicious agents. At a minimum, such precautions shall include the installation, upgrading and use of commercial virus detection software to scan files and documents presented to the Court. All files submitted to the Court must be in a format that allows for virus scanning. No files can be submitted in a compressed or zipped format. F. In the event a party is unable to provide its digital evidence in the aforementioned formats, they may file a motion seeking an exception to the policy. The party must show why the evidence cannot be provided in a conformant format. If granted, the party is required to provide the Court with the necessary technology (e.g. software player) to view the files. G. Supported Media Formats: Video Formats 3ivX D4 Cinepak Dirac / VC‐2 DivX® (1/2/3/4/5/6) DV H.261 H.263 / H.263i H.264 / MPEG‐4 AVC Indeo Video 3 (IV32) MJPEG (A/B) MPEG‐1/2 MPEG‐4 ASP On2 VP3/VP5/VP6 Real Video (1/2/3/4) Sorenson 1/3 Theora WMV 1/2 WMV 3 / WMV‐9 / VC‐1 XviD Audio Formats AAC AAC ‐ MPEG‐4 part3 AC3 – A/52 (Dolby Digital) ADPCM ALAC Alaw/µlaw AMR (3GPP) APE (Monkey Audio) ATRAC 3 DTS DV Audio E‐AC‐3 (Dolby Digital Plus) 3 FLAC LPCM MAC MIDI MLP / TrueHD 3 Mod (.s3m, .it, .mod) MP3 MP3 ‐ MPEG Layer 3 MPEG 1‐4 Musepack / MPC QCELP QDM2 QDMC (QuickTime) Real Audio 2 Speex TrueAudio (TTA) Vorbis Wavpack WMA 1/2/3 Approved May 16, 2019 [The policy bears the seal of the Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento at the head of page 1.]
SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO Digital Evidence Policy A. The Court broadly defines digital evidence to include electronic documents, spreadsheets, reports, graphics, and multimedia files. B. Parties presenting multimedia files (audio and video) to the Court for viewing on Court‐owned equipment must ensure the files are in a non‐proprietary format (MPEG, AVI, WAV) and that those
Reviewer note: Composed 2026-10-02 (California T3 Sacramento build 2026-10-02) from BenchPath custody ca/t3/ca-sacramento/site-docs/221_Digital_Evidence_Policy.pdf (258340 bytes, sha256 798455ab23939ac728f02aac3563525571541519c8106c04075cc3ca93643b2a; 2 pages) with the shared verbatim composer (v2 reflow): page marks and running footers removed as chrome; lines reflowed into the document's paragraphs; proof 1 (whitespace-only) and proof 2 (same character multiset as the text layer minus chrome) pass. Documented fixes (whitespace-only or same-character reorders; the proofs hold): the page mark removed and the approval date kept once; a compound broken at its hyphen rejoined; the two lists of supported formats set one format per line, column by column.
1 verbatim requirement on exhibits in BETSY BENSON's division.
4 verbatim requirements on exhibits & evidence.
1 verbatim requirement on exhibits & evidence.