The breakneck pace at which the case against Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is proceeding hit a snag Wednesday when prosecutors and defense attorneys fought over how tens of thousands of pages of documents and hundreds of hours of audio and video evidence should be turned over to the defense.

Stevens, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, is set to stand trial Sept. 24 in federal court on seven felony charges that he made false statements on his Senate financial disclosure forms.

A hastily scheduled conference was called to resolve a dispute over the form in which the government should be required to make accessible to the defense the documents and recordings it has flagged as possible evidence.

Defense lawyers wanted prosecutors to mark the beginning and end of the documents the government provided, to furnish an index of audio files and to provide surveillance logs to indicate that no unnecessary surveillance was obtained.

The government plans to turn over roughly 67,000 pages of documents, including bank statements and files from the server of oil services company VECO Corp., along with nearly 3,000 audio files from wiretaps and an untold number of video surveillance tapes. Although an exact length is not known, the audio and video files constitute hundreds of hours, the lawyers said.

Without assistance from prosecutors, it would be difficult for defense lawyers to sift through the evidence in the amount of time they have, Stevens’ lawyers argued.

“We will have to spend the next few weeks figuring out where a document begins and where it ends,” said Alex Romain, one of the senator’s lawyers.

Prosecutor Brenda K. Morris said the format in which the government had turned over the documents was not uncommon and would place an undue burden on prosecutors to have to indicate each and every document’s start and end point.

“It’s not our job to go through these documents,” Morris said, adding that prosecutors “made perfectly clear at the arraignment” the volume of evidence involved when defense lawyers asked for September trial date.

The lawyers, at the prodding of U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, eventually resolved the issue among themselves, opting to work together on a case-by-case basis.

The dispute over the form in which evidence should be turned over to Stevens’ lawyers was just one of the wheels in motion. Defense lawyers also met the second of two deadlines associated with their bid to move Stevens’ trial to Alaska. All other motions in the case are due Thursday.

If the Sept. 24 date holds, his trial will begin less that two months after Stevens’ July 29 indictment — an unusually quick speed for a federal corruption case, particularly one involving as high-profile a figure as Stevens.

“We don’t have the luxury of a lot of time,” Sullivan reminded lawyers.

Unlike many defendants, who seek to delay their trials to have time to build their defense, Stevens, who maintains he is innocent, has pressed for an early trial date in the hopes of clearing his name before the Nov. 4 general election.

If he survives the Aug. 26 primary, he is going to have to fight hard not to be ousted by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, the likely Democratic nominee.

On Aug. 11, William Weimar, the former owner of an Alaska-based oil company, became the latest individual to plead guilty in an ongoing probe of corruption in Alaska politics.