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Preparing a Conference Presentation, Video Abstract, or Case Report from a Case

Dotan Asselmann

Presenting a single case — as a conference talk, a surgical video abstract, a case report, or a PowerPoint presentation for a meeting — comes down to five steps in Theator: find the moments worth showing, build the video, de-identify and download it, draft the text around it, and share the work with co-authors. Theator holds the footage and the case data, and the AI Assistant can help with both the video and the words. The slides themselves you build in your own presentation tool.

Before you start

  • You can edit most cases you can view, once they have finished recording and have video you can play. The video editor is a desktop tool. Create clip can still be missing on such a case in three situations: it has more than 20 playable recordings (see Or edit it yourself in the video editor below); its first finished recording cannot be played, because the editor ties a new edit to that recording and a later recording that plays is not enough; or the video editor is not turned on for your account. If you need the editor on a case where it is missing, ask your Customer Success Manager.

  • Downloading needs video download permission, which your organization's admin controls. Without it you can still build and save clips, but there is no Download button. See Theator Permissions Overview.

  • No playable video means no footage to cut. When a case has no video to play, its card or case page says why:

    • Not recorded — the case was not recorded, either under your hospital's recording policy or because recording was turned off for it.
    • Recording removed — the recording was manually deleted.
    • Room Not Covered — the operating room is not covered by Theator recording.
    • Not available to view — your hospital's video policy does not let you view the recording. Contact your Account Admin if you think you should have access.
    • Expired — the recording passed its retention period and was permanently deleted. See Video Retention — Understanding Recording Expiration.
    • Analyzing video — the video is still being processed. Check back later.

    A case scheduled for later, or one whose video has not arrived yet, shows a time or waiting message instead. Without video you can still use the parts of section 4 that do not depend on footage, such as PubMed references.

1. Find the moments worth showing

Start with the case page. The Insights timeline shows the procedure's AI-detected steps and events, so you can jump straight to the parts that tell the story. See Intro to Insights.

You can also ask the AI Assistant to do the first pass — for example:

  • "List the major steps of this case in order, with timestamps, and suggest the best moment to show for each."
  • "Which snapshots were taken on this case, and what do they show?"

The step list comes from the case's AI annotations, so it is available only for procedure types Theator detects steps for. The assistant does not estimate steps it cannot see.

For stills on your slides, use the snapshots captured during the case. Open the Snapshots Library on the case page to name and download them. See How to Capture and Manage Snapshots.

A snapshot is a still image from the case, and the video editor's Blur tool does not apply to it. Look at each image before it goes on a slide, leave out or crop any image that shows something identifying a patient or staff member, and follow your institution's policy before sharing images outside the hospital.

2. Build the video

Video abstracts and presentation videos often have a strict time limit, such as "under 5 minutes". You can have the AI Assistant draft the edit for you, build it yourself in the video editor, or combine the two.

Let the AI Assistant draft the edit

Describe the video you need in the chat, including the time limit. For example:

"I'm making a video abstract for a conference. Draft a 4–5 minute edit of this case: the key steps in order, speed up the long dissection, a title for each step, and skip the out-of-body footage."

The assistant drafts the edit but does not save a clip. It shows the draft as a card in the chat that you can play. A draft can include:

  • Up to 50 pieces of the case's footage, in any order, each at its own speed from 0.25x to 8x.
  • Text titles, arrows, shapes, and blurred regions drawn on the video. Shapes stay where they are drawn — they do not follow the anatomy as the camera moves.
  • Skipped out-of-body stretches.
  • Spoken narration in a generated English voice.

The assistant works out the length of the draft and aims for the limit you give it, but nothing enforces that limit, so a draft can come out longer than you asked. Check the length before you submit, and if it runs over, ask the assistant to shorten it or trim it in the video editor. To change anything, ask in the chat — "make the anastomosis slower" or "drop the second title" — and the assistant revises the same draft.

What you see on the draft card:

The card shows What you can do
Draft · not saved yet Click Save clip to save it to the case. When the draft is an edit of an existing clip, the button reads Save changes (your own clip) or Save as new clip (someone else's).
This clip changed elsewhere since the draft was made Click Save as new clip to keep the draft without overwriting the other changes.
Saved · open clip Click open clip to view the saved clip on the case page.

Two more buttons can appear on the card. Open in editor saves the draft as a clip, if you have not saved it yet, and continues the edit in the video editor. It needs the video editor turned on for your account, and for an unsaved draft it appears only if you own the chat (or are an administrator) — the same people who see the save buttons above. Someone viewing a chat shared by another user can play the draft but cannot save it or carry it into the editor; if the draft was already saved, they can open that clip. Download saves the video file to your computer, and appears only if you have video download permission.

Or edit it yourself in the video editor

Click Create clip in the video player's controls on the case page to open the video editor. There you can trim, split, and reorder footage, change the speed of each part, add text, arrows, shapes, and blur, and navigate by the procedure's detected steps in the Steps lane. One edit can hold up to 50 video segments, 100 annotations, and 20 voiceover recordings. For the full tour, see Using the Theator Video Editor.

Cases with more than 20 playable recordings. A case with more than 20 separate recordings that can be played cannot be opened as a single new edit. Recordings that cannot be played do not count toward the 20. For a case over the limit, the player's Create clip button is hidden, and Create Clip in the Snapshots & Clips panel opens a small dialog where you name a clip and set one start and end time. That cuts a single excerpt only — annotations, voiceover, and multi-part edits need the full editor. Clips that already exist on the case still open in the editor with Edit.

Add narration

You have two options:

  • Generated narration — ask the AI Assistant to narrate the draft. The voice is a generated English voice; there is no other language. The spoken audio is kept for the case so the draft card can play it, even if you never save the draft, so keep patient names, MRNs, and case IDs out of the narration text.
  • Your own voice — in the video editor, click Record voiceover in the timeline toolbar and narrate as the video plays.

Narration from either source lands in the editor's Audio lane, where you can move or delete it.

3. De-identify and download the video

Before a video leaves the hospital:

  • Out-of-body footage is de-identified automatically on every recording. See How does the video de-identification work?.
  • Blur anything else that could identify a patient or staff member with the Blur tool in the video editor. Blur is applied when the file is produced, so the downloaded video carries it.
  • Check the text and narration you added. Titles, text overlays, and narration — whether you typed or recorded them or the AI Assistant drafted them — are carried into the downloaded video exactly as written or spoken, and blur does not cover them. Remove any patient name, MRN, or hospital case ID from them before you download or submit the video.
  • Follow your institution's policy for sharing surgical video outside the hospital.

To download, click Download in the video editor's top bar or on the AI Assistant's draft card. An edit with annotations, narration, or speed changes has to be rendered, which usually happens in your browser — keep the tab open until the download finishes.

The downloaded file contains your own titles, annotations, and narration. It does not contain Theator's AI Insights, step annotations, or other on-screen platform overlays.

4. Draft slides, speaker notes, and references with the AI Assistant

The AI Assistant can help you write the words around the video — an outline, speaker notes, and references — but you assemble the final slides or manuscript yourself.

What the assistant can help with

  • An outline of the case. Ask for the case's steps in order, then ask the assistant to turn them into a slide-by-slide outline or speaker notes you can edit.
  • References. Ask the assistant to find literature on PubMed. It cites each study inline with the first author, year, and a direct link, plus its PMID. See Finding Medical Literature with the AI Assistant.
  • The operative report draft. When you ask from a case's page, the assistant can also read that case's operative report draft in Theator, if one has been started.
  • Your draft deck. Upload a PowerPoint file and the assistant can read its slide text, speaker notes, and up to 8 images — useful for asking it to tighten your notes. See Uploading Files to the AI Assistant.
Note: Do not include patient names, MRNs, hospital case IDs, or any other patient-identifying information in a literature search. The search query is sent to PubMed. Describe the case in general clinical terms instead — procedure, anatomy, and outcome.

What it does not do

  • It does not create a PowerPoint or Word file. Its answers are chat text. Use the Copy response button under an answer and paste the text into your slides or document. Answers about a case can include its hospital case ID and other identifiers, so read what you copy and remove any patient name, MRN, or hospital case ID before it goes into slides, a manuscript, or a submission. See Copying, Sharing, and Exporting AI Assistant Outputs.
  • It does not write a full abstract or research article in the chat. When you ask for one, the assistant offers to open the Research Hub, Theator's workspace for drafting abstracts and articles. See Starting a Research Project from the AI Assistant and Using the Research Hub.
  • It does not read hospital records outside Theator, such as dictated post-op notes. See What the AI Assistant Can and Can't Do.

Review every clinical statement, number, and reference before you submit. Each meeting sets its own submission requirements, so check its guidelines.

5. Keep the project together and share it with co-authors

Clips you save — from the editor or from an AI Assistant draft — stay on the case in the Snapshots & Clips panel, so you can come back to them.

To work with co-authors, gather the case (or a set of related cases) into a collection, add a note to each case explaining why it is there, and share the collection with your colleagues. The steps are the same as for an M&M set — see Preparing Cases for M&M, Grand Rounds & Teaching and How can I share my collection with other users?.

Anyone you share a collection with can view every case in it, watch the recordings, and open the case details. Before you share, check that each co-author is someone you are allowed to show those cases to, take out any case that is not part of the project, and follow your institution's data-sharing policy.

If you also need case data in a spreadsheet — for a grant application, for example — see Copying, Sharing, and Exporting AI Assistant Outputs.

Note: A spreadsheet of case data is not de-identified by default. The columns in a file the AI Assistant exports are whatever fields were requested — they can include a case ID, names, emails, and other IDs. Before you attach a file to a grant application or send it outside your institution, check every column, remove any that identify a patient or a surgeon (including the case ID column, if there is one), and follow your institution's data-sharing policy.

What's Next?

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