File Formats & Natives 

An overview of Opus2-compatible file types. 

v1.0 

Shape 

Between Documents and Transcripts, Magnum accepts a wide range of file formats. The following provides some guidance on acceptable file types and the handling of native documents. 

Documents 

Magnum provides your team one place to access, manage and collaborate on your key case materials. Magnum will accept most file formats, though searchable (OCR’d) PDFs are preferred. Though it does increase upload times, Magnum also provides the capability to OCR your PDFs during your initial import. 


Native File Types Automatically Converted to PDF 

Only searchable PDF files are indexed by Magnum. As of Magnum 6.3, many of the most common native file types will be automatically converted to a PDF when uploaded and indexed for searching. These files include: 

  • Word: .docx (and doc, .dot, .wbk, .docx, .docm, .dotx, .dotm, .docb) 

  • PowerPoint: .pptx (and .ppt, .ppts, .potm, .potx, .ppa, .ppam, .pps, .ppsm, .ppsx, .pptm) 

  • Images: .png, .jpeg, .jpg, .bmp, .tiff, .tif, .gif 

  • Plain text and data formats: .txt, .txts, .csv 

  • OpenDocument: .odt 

  • Markup formats: .htm, .html, .xml 


Other Native File Types that can be Converted to PDF (Enterprise clients only) 

The following file types are not set by to convert to a PDF automatically. Enterprise clients can request the default settings for these file types be changed on a server-wide basis. 

  • .xlsx (and .xls, .xlsm, .xltx, .xltm, .xlsb, .xlt, .xla, .xlam) 


Accessing Native Files Converted to PDF 

A link to the original, native file is saved within a metadata field for the converted PDF. Users can access the native by clicking the View menu in the documents tabs and checking the box for Native.  


Additional Native File Handling 

Though a variety of native file types can be loaded into Magnum, any native file type not listed above will be imported as a slip sheet with a link to download the native file.  

Remember that there are no native file viewers built into Magnum. Users must have the appropriate native application installed on their device to open native files from Magnum. 


Best Practices for Additional Native Files 

Because native files are not indexed in Magnum, they will not appear in search results. We recommend uploading a searchable PDF version of all native files in addition to the native. This assures you will get complete search results while maintaining access to the native file. We recommend using the Related Documents tool to establish a relationship between the converted PDF and native files. 


Transcripts 

The following transcript file formats can be loaded directly into Magnum: 

  • LEF (Magnum will automatically link and upload included exhibits) 

  • ASCII 

  • TXT 

  • MDB 

  • PCF 

  • PTF 

  • TRN 

  • XML (generated from Case Notebook) 

NOTE: While you can load PDF versions of transcripts if the file formats above are not available, these transcripts will not appear in the Transcripts tab and will not be treated as Transcripts. This means you will not be able to designate testimony or run transcript reports. However, you can annotate these transcripts as if they were exhibits. 


Videos 

The following video file formats can be uploaded to Magnum to sync with an existing transcript: 

  • MPEG 

  • MP4 


Best Practices for Uploading Video Files 

It is strongly recommended that users upload only one set of video files to a workspace at a time. Magnum will only ever convert two video file sets in parallel; any other video files will be queued up for the conversion process and Magnum will process them on a first come, first serve basis.