Hello Everyone,
I work at a doctor's office (mainly cosmetic surgery) and take care of their computer maintenance etc.

During the course of an average day, the doctor has many consultations with new patients. Each time that someone
is interested in a procedure, he explains what occurs during the procedure they are interested in; what can be
gained, as well as any possible risks/complications involved. After this has been discussed, the doctor will express
his professional opinion of what he thinks would be most effective. The final goal is to have given the patient enough
information about the technique etc. to be able to make an informed and educated decision on their own, whether
they would like to go through with the procedure etc.

While some patients arrive at the office without any procedure in mind, many already have a preconceived idea
about which procedures they are interested in. Whether that idea is correct or not, is determined after educating
them about the different procedures and determining, what end result they hope to achieve.
As most of this education process is the same for every patient, much of this time is spent on the same material
over and over again throughout the day. As a result, the physician would be interested in making some sort of
presentation/video which would cover most of this teaching process thus familiarizing the patient with most of the
process before meeting with him. Hopefully, giving them something to think about and the education needed to
come up with questions to ask him, when he comes to speak with them. This would not only save him time, but also
the energy of having to repeat the same thing over and over again.

OK, enough background into why.
After being asked if it was possible, I thought sure why not, but implementation could be difficult. That is where all of
you come in!

I envision the project as something similar to a PowerPoint presentation/video documentary. In fact, I think that
PowerPoint has most of the components that I would be interested in, in most cases it would look more static than I
would like. I would like to shoot for navigation that similar to that of a DVD, where videos can be used in the active
menu background or as a transition between menu's etc. having a smooth/professional appearance is also
important. Because I wanted everything to be as smooth as possible I was at first inclined to go with DVD or a video
only approach. The reason that I would rather not go with DVD, but PowerPoint instead is because the information
text/pictures may need to be changed or edited as time goes on. I would like this to be done without needing to redo
the entire project for every change.

Another difficulty is that I would like to use full screen video. The intended display is a HD flat screen LCD, with the
video in High Definition off of a PC. The player PPT uses by default is too slow. (As a side note, is there a way to
make a PPT presentation that will go to a slide and then open a video in full screen, with an external media player
like media player classic etc. which uses fewer system resources? Does the process cause a jitter or does it
appear to be smooth/seamless) The system which has no problem playing back HD video, just chokes whenever it
is attempted through PowerPoint. Are there some codecs that PPT plays back more easily than others?

Each procedure will probably be an independent presentation which is then tied into the main navigation structure.
Another thing that I cannot think of a way to do easily (maybe I just have not found the right program yet!) which
would be very important to the success and ease of use for the system is to be able to create play-lists on the fly.
In the main menu, we will probably have a menu with procedures A to Z, as well as an intro (thanks for coming to
the office/explain the goal of the video etc.) and extro (thanks for watching, the doctor with be with you shortly).
For example, if a patient comes for a consult and is interested in procedures A(1), C(3), and D(4). Of course we
would like to be able to show them these. Ideally the staff would be able to push a button on the remote (which is
controlling the computer and the presentation) for play-list and then push 1,3,4 after a few seconds a play-list has
been created with an intro, A, C, D, extro which will then play back to back until they have been completed. after it
has played through, then it would automatically go back to either the main menu or a looping before and after
picture presentation, which occurs on regular intervals after no user interaction.

Because video is coming from a computer which will be sending information to two different displays, one the
computer terminal itself and the other the display which the patients are watching. If after a play-list is created the
computer could automatically display the time remaining, on the computer terminal screen until the play-list is
completed as a way for the employees to be reminded of when the program will be finished and to coordinate the
schedule with the doctor. this would be a very useful thing to have but should not make or break the system.
I am aware that this is a rather ambitious project. I would like to know if you think it is actually feasible to make a
system like this? Can it be done with today's technology? Are you familiar with anything similar which has been
attempted/completed? How did they go about it? Which programs should be used, for all/part of this project? What
do you think would best fit my needs, flash/video(DVD)/PowerPoint/other?

I look forward to your responses! Thanks in advance.