Behind the Scenes of MY sigRA: My Audio Editing Workflow

As promised, here is a snippet of the (you may be surprised) hard work that goes into making medical education videos. And we’ll start off with just audio.

My technique is certainly not perfect, and every project teaches me something new. Just producing this video led to me having to solve multiple problems requiring multiple takes: lighting issues, noise, my own uhm’s and ah’s, and many more. Since it’s not “medical education”, I’m publishing it on my personal channel instead.

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Virtual Live Anaesthesia Workshop - Regional Anaesthesia for the Chest

If you came here just to watch the video, here you go:

As usual, production notes follow.

The company that handled the live webinar definitely delivered, allowing footage from 3 different areas in Malaysia to be broadcast live via YouTube with only insignificant hitches. There was only 1 pre-recorded session; everything else was live. There was no noise to fix (thank God!). For me there were only a few things to do/fix:

1. To open the video, I created a small clip of the flyer panning the profile of the speakers and schedule, which then transitions into the introduction.

2. In a live broadcast, there would obviously be breaks between sessions. Even a few seconds is unnecessary in this on demand viewing format, so I deleted most of the unnecessary pauses (and even some dialogue) and added some simple transitions.

3. The speakers all speak obviously in different volumes (even in the same clip), so these were fixed with a compressor plugin, with adjustments made only to the input gain for the different speakers (and even with the same speaker but different segment. The aim is based as my now usual norm as per the recommendations here: around -12 to -15; there is no risk of peaking/clipping, but the listener will have to turn up the volume a bit (but avoid distortion). It was too tedious to fix every segment where levels drifted within the same clip; only those obvious (too soft dialogue, noises like sneezes) were edited. I noticed that my job wasn’t perfect, ie there were was some segments peaking at -9 on average, and there was some averaging -15, but in editing an almost 2 hour video as a non-pro (coming out as a 7 GB H.264 file) , I think my job was passable enough and I won’t go for perfect. Best to listen on dedicated speakers away from outside noise.

4. Only minimal highlighting was required (where the somehow the pointer of the ultrasound machine did not appear in the broadcast). These were easily solved with a few arrows and titles.

5. In the Q&A session, where both venues were broadcast simultaneously, I noticed that the audio from Johor lagged behind the video a bit. Wherever it was significant (e.g. where the team from Johor were answering questions), I pushed the audio back (around 17 frames in a 30fps video).

Audio effects used.

The compressor settings

A lil’ bit of low boost for everyone

Fixing the audio lag

Bringing the audio levels down but more even overall

There were of course some stuff that I have no power to fix:

1. There was some echo in the HKL demo, probably from the panelist mics picking up the audio broadcast from the moderator. I don’t know what is the fix for this, unless it is intended for only the speakers to hear from the moderator/other speakers.

2. The footage from Gleneagles could benefit from a bit of color adjustments. But since I’m using a cheap TV as my laptop monitor for now, I can’t fix it.

But overall, I do feel that this is a distinct polishing job of the already very good live footage; this was not a simple copy and upload. Enjoy.

(Do inform if you see any obvious need for improvement of the presentation; otherwise the version uploaded is final)

The Video Workflow for the Regional Refresher Series

I’ve described the audio engineering challenges and processes related to the Regional Refresher Workshop here, here, and here. Now I’d like to describe the videography processes used.

It was very simple actually. I first used the original slides and reformatted the presentations for widescreen, then exported the presentation as JPEG’s, which I then inserted into the project one by one, with the duration adjusted as necessary. Then I inserted simple transitions in between and at the beginning and end of the presentation. If a pointer was needed, I’d insert a simple one via Generators -> Shapes. If a highlighting of an image was needed, I’d use some simple masking and transparency effects:

If a presentation included video of a particular scan, I copied out the video within the presentation and inserted it into the project to be played full screen for the best clarity.

Project settings: I forgot to alter these in the beginning, but set it later to 1080p, 30 fps; 24 would also do actually in retrospect. The original video recording was in 50 fps and overkill; setting the minimum fps would cut down exporting time on this soon to be expired machine.

There was actual video shot on camera, and in the small available room was focused on the projected slides. But there were many problems with it.

Firstly, the positioning of it led to some of the audience’s heads being in between the camera and the screen. Secondly there was constant changes in the focus and white balance. Thirdly, the best camera setup can’t achieve the same sharpness as the slides being displayed directly.

Then you might be thinking why record at all? Actually there are excellent reasons to be recording video even if the footage is unused. Number 1, the audio recorded with the video was used to synchronize the dedicated audio. Another reason is that I used the footage to guide the placement of slides as well as the duration and use of pointing/highlighting (especially from the mouse movement seen on screen). Those reasons alone made video recording indispensable.

Let’s see if there’s a way of improvising further moving forward. Till then, don’t forget to watch the upcoming webinar on Regional Anaesthesia for the Chest today at 10 am KL time. This will be the live YouTube link; later on I might do some trimming into smaller chunks for easier consumption. The A/V company set-up is making us anticipate a good presentation.