To create a production
- On the DISCO home page, in the main menu, click Productions.
- On the Productions page, click Create New.
- On the New Production page, in the Name text box, enter a name for the new production.
- In the Documents section, select the documents to include in the production.
- In the Stamps section, enter the Bates prefix, starting number, and position for the document stamp.
- In the Metadata Load File section, define what metadata you would like to include in your load file, and adjust the date and time formats. You can select US or European date formats as needed. Users have access to over 150 metadata fields as well as formatting options for dates and times, durations, and file size outputs.
Selecting documents to produce
There are three ways to select which documents you would like to produce: by tag, by saved search, or by search history.
Producing by tags is the most common way of producing in DISCO. Documents with tags excluded from the production will NOT be produced, even if a document also has an included tag (that is, exclusionary tags trump inclusionary ones).
When producing by search, DISCO forces the user to produce from a saved search or their own search history, which guarantees that they have run the search at least once and had a chance to verify the results.
Stamps
Bates stamps are used to track specific pages in a document, or an entire electronic file that cannot be imaged to pages (such as a video file). This allows attorneys to refer to Bates-stamped pages when they are presenting information to opposing counsel or in court. DISCO's default Bates stamp methodology is below (though you can modify it):
- Prefix = Name of matter (default)
- Starting Number = 000001 (default)
Additional stamps can be used to notate confidential documents, but can also be used to apply any textual stamp to documents with a certain tag. They appear in the lower left corner of all near-native documents within that production. Any number of additional stamps can be created for a production, and will be stacked vertically.
Document format
The production document format options include:
- PDF (default)
- B&W TIFF & Color JPEG
- B&W TIFF
- Native with Slipsheet (unless redacted)
By default, DISCO will produce documents in color, PDF format. TIFF images will always be in black and white. If a B&W TIFF & Color JPEG format is chosen, DISCO will scan each page for any color content, and create a JPEG image if any color is found.
Downloading your production
To download your production, on the Productions page, click Download. When the production is complete, a folder in a ZIP file named VOL0001 will be created (unless there are multiple volumes, or the starting volume title has been changed). Within this folder, each document produced will have three versions, one within each of the following sub-folders:
- DOCS (PDF images) or IMAGES (TIFF or JPEG images)
- NATIVES (original file type for documents that are rendered as natives)
- OCR (one text file per document)
- Load File
A load file is basically a spreadsheet summarizing the data, with columns notating all exported document fields. The following load file versions are in every production, regardless of production format:
- xlsx (Human-readable spreadsheet version of dat file - generally not used by other software)
- dat (document metadata)
- lfp (IPRO file for reconstructing documents from images)
- opt (Concordance/Relativity file for reconstructing documents from images)
- log (Copy of the opt file)
More than 80% of productions run in DISCO complete in under 30 minutes. If you are concerned about the performance of your production, please contact DISCO Support.
For more information about productions, see Advanced production options, How to use production duplication options, or our general section on Producing documents