Captured Light Studio: Sharing the Latest Medical Techniques through Multimedia
Keene, N.H., may not be the video hub of the universe, but it's the center of John Snowdon's world. In 1986, he made it the home of his interactive media company, Captured Light Studio. And shortly thereafter, charmed by the town's quintessential New England beauty and quality of life, he and his family adopted it as their hometown. There was just one glitch: editing his projects required driving to a video production company two hours away.
To eliminate this drive time, Snowdon purchased his first Avid Media Composer editing system in the early 1990s, a decision he credits with helping to jump-start his business. "With Avid, I no longer needed to rent a $1 million editing suite to produce top-quality material," says Snowdon. "Finally, I could offline and finish high-res projects in my own suite at a cost I could afford and pass those savings on to my clients. Avid gave me a technological advantage that began attracting more and more new business."
Today, the company competes in the global medical market, producing CDs, DVDs, streaming media, and satellite telecasts that train physicians on the newest surgical tools and techniques. It has grown to a full-time staff of five (including an Avid editor, a Flash programmer, two writers/producers, and an office manager) supported by a dedicated team of freelance cameramen, animators, and lighting directors. Collectively, the staff has captured more than 5,000 surgical procedures on video and has worked with more than 1,000 surgeons worldwide - and Avid systems continue to support their work. The company offlines and finishes each project on its Windows XP-based Avid editing systems. These include an Avid Media Composer Adrenaline system equipped with the Avid DNxcel card (for future editing in HD); the powerful yet affordable Avid Xpress Studio Complete with an integrated set of audio and video editing, effects, animation, and DVD authoring tools; and the portable Avid Xpress Pro software for laptop use. The company plans to add a second Avid Media Composer Adrenaline system, along with an Avid Unity LANshare system for shared storage and networking, in the near future.
"With our Avid systems, I have the freedom to work locally and compete globally," says Snowdon. "They've been instrumental to our success. Our annual sales have grown from $100,000 to more than $1 million due to the quality and the efficiency that Avid [systems] bring in post production."
"Our annual sales have grown from $100,000 to more than $1 million due to the quality and the efficiency that Avid [systems] bring in post production."
- John Snowdon, President/Owner, Captured Light Studio
Streaming Cataract Surgery to the Web
While all Captured Light Studio projects begin on video, they are typically delivered in electronic formats using Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime, or MPEG files so that time-strapped physicians can readily access them on-demand via the Web or interactive CD. One client company recently asked Snowdon to produce streaming media for its Web site to demonstrate a breakthrough technique for delicate cataract surgery.
Snowdon and his crew first shot interview footage with the ophthalmic surgeon who performed this procedure, using a Sony DSR-50 camera and DVCAM. They then set up in the operating room to record the live surgery, using a Sony DXC33 digital microscope camera to capture a top-down view of each infinitesimal step in removing the cataract. They also reconfigured their Sony DSR-50 camera with a proprietary lens to record a side view to reveal the depth of the ultrasonic sculpting process used to break up the cataract.
Next, Snowdon digitized the multicam footage into the Media Composer Adrenaline system using a Sony DSR2000 DVCAM player/recorder and combined all the different camera angles on a single timeline. He edited the project in full 1:1 resolution from start to finish on the Avid system, drawing upon the
system's comprehensive visual effects features to transform the raw video footage into a world-class digital training tool.
"Slow motion is a tremendous teaching tool, especially in ultrasonic cataract surgery where things happen very quickly," explains Snowdon. "With Avid, we can create incredibly smooth slow-motion effects. So we can clearly show how a cataract moves and dissolves during this procedure. Our clients love it. Our surgeons love it. And Avid makes it unbelievably easy to do."
With its one-click color correction, the Media Composer Adrenaline system also enabled Snowdon to analyze and color-correct entire sequences automatically to create matching sequences quickly and easily. "During surgery, a physician will dim the light once the lens has been removed to prevent damage to the retina," says Snowdon. "So your color balance tends to shift during the procedure. With Avid Media Composer, you can check the accuracy of your color on a real-time waveform meter and vectorscope, and then view it live on your monitor. Its color correction is phenomenal."
The Media Composer Adrenaline system also added speed and flexibility to the editing workflow. For example, the system's multicam feature proved to be an 'enormous timesaver' by allowing Snowdon to synchronize all of his video sources during editing. "We use anywhere from two to five cameras for our surgical productions," he explains. "During editing, we can rapidly switch from one camera angle to another without having to go and search for it because all our cameras are synchronized with the same timecode. So editing a five-camera show requires almost no additional time compared to a single-camera show. In addition to making us incredibly fast, this multicam ability also makes us extremely accurate by enabling us to show multiple views of a complex surgical procedure - and in surgery, it's all about accuracy."
Meanwhile the system's ease-of-use promoted creativity on the job. "I've always found Avid software to have the most intuitive editor interface," he says. "Changes couldn't be easier. I can try new effects and simply click the 'Undo' button if they don't work out."
Rendering the edited footage took virtually no time at all using the Media Composer Adrenaline hardware's accelerated 10-bit processing. "We don't even have time to get a cup of coffee because the rendering is so fast," says Snowdon.
To create streaming media output of the cataract surgical procedure, Snowdon exported the finished footage as a QuickTime reference movie - a process he says took 'just seconds.' Then he imported the QuickTime file into Terran Interactive Media Cleaner, where it was converted to MPEG1 format and exported as a streaming media file for distribution on the client's Web site.
"[Avid Xpress Pro] gives us the portability to edit on site - or on the road or in the air - without lugging around any additional equipment."
- John Snowdon, President/Owner, Captured Light Studio
Editing On-the-Fly from 30,000 Feet
From London to Kuala Lumpur, Captured Light Studio often shoots live telecasts of surgical procedures and beams them, via satellite, to medical conferences thousands of miles away for training purposes. The company also records each telecast on video in DVCAM using a Sony DSR-50 camera. Whether a telecast is recorded using the PAL or NTSC broadcasting standard, Avid systems can handle any project requirements due to their wide-ranging support for multiple source and delivery formats.
The systems' flexibility pays off in other ways, too. "We have a 'shoot once, use many' philosophy," explains Snowdon. "So we need the ability to take each live satellite telecast, cut the footage numerous ways, and output a myriad of different products ranging from interactive CDs and DVDs to Flash for the Web and MPEG-1 for PowerPoint presentations. All of our projects go through our Avid systems. They're incredibly flexible and easy to use."
Snowdon recently shot a live satellite telecast of physicians performing five groundbreaking cataract and laser surgeries in New Orleans and uplinked them to the American Association of Ophthalmology Conference in San Francisco. Following the telecast, one of the contributing physicians asked if he could use the footage in a PowerPoint presentation the next day in San Francisco.
"Fortunately I had my laptop version of Avid Xpress Pro with me," Snowdon says. "So I could immediately import the footage into the software and digitize the files using a portable hard drive connected via FireWire. A few hours later, I caught my flight to the conference, edited the footage onboard the plane, converted it to an MPEG file, and emailed the file to the physician
that night for his next-day presentation. That's the beauty of Avid Xpress Pro. It gives us the portability to edit on site - or on the road or in the air - without lugging around any additional equipment."
Once he returned home, Snowdon produced a two-hour DVD of the entire satellite telecast. Thanks to the interoperability between Avid's editing systems, he was able to use the metadata and project files he created earlier on Avid Xpress Pro software and import it along with the remaining raw footage into the Media Composer Adrenaline system to add finishing creative touches and cut the final program. He then created a DVD title from the finished video project.
Now that high-definition DVDs are available, Snowdon believes that many clients will soon be clamoring for the HD capabilities of his Avid editing suites to create an even clearer view of cutting-edge surgery. "There's definitely an HD paradigm shift ahead," he says. "And because of Avid's solutions, we're ready for it."
* CREDIT: Courtesy of Captured Light Studio, Inc.