Scopists' opinions, please. Case Catalyst or Eclipse?

[Carol]

Hello

I'm a former court reporter trying to get into scoping. It's been a while since I reported, and my software is now obsolete! I've pretty much narrowed it down to Case Catalyst or Eclipse. My old software is Premier Power, so that's why I'm leaning toward Case Catalyst (same company). Eclipse sounds really good for reporters, but I don't know about for scopists.

If anyone out there is familiar with both Premier Power and Case Catalyst and would like to share your expertise, I would really like to hear from you.

Likewise, if anyone is familiar with both Case Catalyst and Eclipse, I would love to hear your opinions about those two as well.

Thanks for your help!

Carol

[Sabrina]

Hey, Carol!

I was once a Premier Power user as a reporter and when I decided to upgrade, I got Case CATalyst. I am now a scopist and I use Case. I feel it is very user-friendly and easy to learn, especially since you are already familiar with a Stenograph product. I'm not saying they're just a whole lot alike, but there are some similar things about them.

I recently purchased Eclipse Edit Station so that I could also scope using that, but I tell you, I'm having trouble getting up and running on it. It is just so different from what I'm used to. I think it's a little more confusing, personally.

Good luck with your decision. Also, you can sometimes find used software at a good price online, usually on forums such as this with a classifieds section.

Sabrina Schneider
S.O.S. Scoping Services
www.sosscoping.com

[J.P.]

Case Catalyst is much easier to use. I just finished a 10,000 page job - yes, you heard right - with Eclipse and it was a friggin' nightmare. I am familiar with both softwares and much prefer Case Catalyst - the Help is easier to use, their support people are much nicer and able to help instead of having to call you back, and you'll probably find more people use it - although I can't vouch for that. But I've just talked our court reporters in my district into buying Catalyst INSTEAD of Eclipse because of the mess we had with Eclipse!

[Judy]

J.P.,

Can I ask you a question? Were you ever trained on Eclipse, or did you load the software and just run with it?

Judy

[J.P.]

I've been trained on both. Then I like to get in and play with it, which I'd done some. Then having to actually use it, I found the actual training didn't cover some of the things that needed to be done, so it was awful trying to get the information from support.

[Patricia Harris Vernon]

As a CR I've had scopists that are on Eclipse that edited my file in Eclipse by me exporting her an RTC file to import and listen to the audio...I'm not sure if she listened to the audio via Eclipse or an outside program. I think it was thru Eclipse. I then just imported it back. But I also asked her to send me an ASCII that I imported, too, just in case. I could view either file on my computer via CC. I did a cleanup before sending, but she had no trouble reading the couple of untrans I missed. I've been with Stenograph for forever, and I really like their program and how fast they help...but I've only needed their help about twice in all the years. Once because I forgot my key. I also think that Eclipse is a very good program. They can do about the same. There is a way to import your PP keys or keyboard map into CC and use the same settings.

I haven't tried importing an Eclipse file to my CC program, however, so I couldn't say how that would work and be able to scope it.

[Patricia Harris Vernon]

I meant imported/exported an RTF file not RTC.