The Sidebar, the Clipped Channel, and the File Split

Do not touch the recorder and do not announce anything unprompted. The judge controls whether a bench conference is on or off the record; the reporter's job is to keep capturing whatever the microphones reach and to make the log truthful about what was captured.

Reasoning steps:

1. Keep all channels running. Stopping or muting unilaterally converts a possibly-on-record sidebar into a guaranteed gap, and you cannot restore what you did not capture.
2. Log the boundary. Enter the time the attorneys approached, the time they stepped back, and a note such as "sidebar at 3:05 p.m.; bench voices not intelligible on ambient channels." An honest note is worth more than a misleading silence.
3. If the judge addresses the record, follow the direction: if the sidebar is declared off the record, log start and end times; if it is on the record, the ceiling channels are your only source, so note the intelligibility limitation.
4. Never represent the sidebar as captured if the ambient channels did not pick it up. If asked later whether the sidebar is in the record, your log is the answer.

Triage by whether intelligibility is actually at risk, not by whether the meter looks ugly.

1. Confirm redundancy first. Check whether the witness is intelligible on the nearest ceiling microphone. If yes, the clipping is a quality defect, not a record failure, and it does not justify interrupting live testimony.
2. Adjust what is adjustable without disrupting. Trim input gain on the witness channel at the next natural pause (an exhibit marked, a question finished). Note the time and the change in the log so a later listener understands why levels shift mid-recording.
3. Diagnose the hum on channel 3. A 60 Hz hum usually points to a grounding or cable problem. Swap the cable or move to an alternate input at the next recess; do not crawl under a table mid-examination.
4. Escalate only on impairment. If the witness cannot be understood on any channel, tell the judge at the next break that the record is compromised and ask for a short pause. Framing it as a record-integrity issue, with the channel and time identified, gets cooperation; a vague complaint does not.
5. Record the defect in the log with times, so the transcript can be annotated or the parties can stipulate if a passage is later disputed.

Treat the gap as unverified until proven benign, and treat the SD card as untouchable until copies are verified.

1. Test the boundary immediately after the session. Play across the split on both the internal file and the USB mirror. A file-boundary gap marker is usually an artifact of file closing and reopening, not lost audio. Confirm by checking that the last words before the split and the first words after it are present and continuous.
2. Compare media. If the SD copy shows the gap but the USB mirror does not (or vice versa), one medium captured the transition - document which one and preserve the better copy.
3. Copy, do not move. Duplicate the day's files to two independent destinations, generate a checksum or hash for each file, and record the hash in the log. A hash is what lets you later prove the copy is the copy.
4. Do not reuse or reformat the SD card until the duplicates have been played back and verified, and until the retention period or court rule permits.
5. Log the split times, the gap durations, and the verification result so the record shows the discontinuity was inspected rather than discovered later by someone else.