The High Court has raised legal questions over the use of video evidence, rather than only written transcripts, by Victoria's Court of Appeal in deciding to uphold Pell's child sexual abuse convictions.

Pell is yet to be granted an appeal by the High Court, with his case listed for hearing before the full bench of justices in Canberra next month.

He is seeking to overturn his 2018 conviction on five child sexual abuse charges, over assaults on two 13-year-old choirboys at Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral in 1996.

The court's question was revealed in further submissions filed by Pell's lawyers, Bret Walker SC and Ruth Shann, on Wednesday.

Victoria's three most senior Court of Appeal judges watched the recorded evidence of 12 witnesses, including the complainant, visited St Patrick's Cathedral and examined robes in considering Pell's appeal last year.

Mr Walker and Ms Shann told the High Court in their submissions that appeal courts are allowed to view video recordings and other materials where it is necessary to determine the appeal.

"The court did not identify a reason why it was necessary for them go beyond the written transcript in order to determine the appeal," they wrote.

They argue there was no requirement for the judges to have done so, but the fact that they did cannot affect the High Court's consideration of the case.

"This is because the issue for the court's consideration remained whether it was sufficient for belief in the complainant to eliminate doubt otherwise raised and left unchallenged exculpatory evidence unanswered by the evidence of the complainant," they said.

The submissions also argue that if courts were required to view additional material unnecessarily, it would magnify the workload and "imperil" the distinction between the roles of juries and appeal courts.

Australian Associated Press