Ever since YouTube terminated our account and removed many of our videos, we have moved to this new platform to share our videos. But, it is an uphill task and mission impossible due to several reasons:
- This platform is not optimized for video sharing, as it is almost impossible to upload any video with duration longer than 1 minute. As each of our video is at least 5 minutes, we have to break each video into 5 segments or more, an extremely time consuming process considering that we have around 1000 videos to upload now, and the numbers keep increasing as more and more patients agree to have their videos taken and published. We used to have 50% of patients signing photos/videos consent forms. Currently, 70% of our patients sign photos/videos consent forms.
- Internet speed in Medan, where these videos are kept and uploaded, is extremely slow. It typically takes 48 hours to have a one-minute video clip uploaded to this server. Each patient typically has at least 5 videos taken during her surgery. As each video is approximately 5 minute-long, this has to be broken down into 5 one-minute segments, resulting in a minimum of 25 one-minute segments per surgery. As it requires minimum 2 days to upload a segment, the entire 25 segments require 50 days to upload! We currently have slightly more than 1000 videos to upload, as each video needs to be broken down into at least 5 to 7 segments, this results in 5000 to 7000 video clips which need to be uploaded. Because each video clip requires at least 2 days to upload, to upload the entire library, we need 10,000 to 14,000 days! That is 27 to more than 38 years! As the numbers keep increasing every day, we will never be able to catch up!
- We have previously uploaded 500 videos to YouTube’s server, which were just sitting there on its server waiting to be reviewed by Dr Arthur Tjandra personally before they were finally published with descriptions for each case study. However, after YouTube shut down our account and we realized that it has taken the liberty to delete many of our videos, we decided not to publish those unpublished videos anymore, and deleted all from YouTube server to prevent misuse by them. Therefore, we now have to re-upload those 500 unpublished videos onto this current server. Those 500 videos still need to be broken down into 2500 segments before they can be uploaded.
Due to all these circumstances, we plead to all our patients who are returning for subsequent sessions, to upload the videos which have been provided to them, onto video-sharing platforms, then provide us the links to those videos. By doing this, we can just focus on doing the write-ups of the case studies. All we need to do is to put links to those videos on our blog.
In the past, we provide subsidized rates for patients who agree to sign consent to have their pictures and videos published. However, starting on 1st Jan 2017, we no longer offer subsidized rates to returning patients who do not upload videos to a video-sharing platform. Although they may be more than willing to sign consent to allow the videos to be published, but due to reasons stated above, it would be impossible for us to upload the thousands of videos ourselves without the assistance of patients themselves. Hence, we no longer require consent if a patient is unwilling to upload her videos herself, as it is unlikely for us to do it with a backlog of thousands of videos.
We are sure many of our patients have benefited from the thousands of videos we have published on YouTube between 2013 and 2016. Between that period of time, we had published more than 400 case numbers. Each case number represents 1 patient. Typically a patient has 4-5 surgeries done by Dr Arthur Tjandra. Hence, the 400 case numbers actually represent at least 2000 surgeries! Unfortunately, many of the videos have been deleted by YouTube, and we do not wish to waste effort to publish more only to have them removed. Although YouTube has deleted many of our videos, there are currently still close to 3,000 videos left on our YouTube channel.
If you had benefited from surgical videos of our other patients before coming to us, why do you not do the same and help other prospective patients who are still in the process of doing their research, so that they can make informed decision? Those who had come to us for revision surgeries would wish that they had known Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie much earlier!
You may ask why don’t we just published photographs? After all, other surgeons and clinics just publish photographs. They do not show videos. Even if they do, they show videos of photographs! Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie thinks that requesting him to show photographs instead of videos is an insult to his skill and pride. He takes pride in his works. He has nothing to hide. He does not need to Photoshop/edit his results. He wants people to see the result of his works as they are, whether good or bad. And videos seem to be the best way to showcase his works! The way he has all his videos taken, from 360 degrees and multiple angles, is impossible to edit!
You may also ask, you guys already have 3,000 videos published on YouTube and 5,000 photographs published on our website. Why do we still need to publish more? It is because Dr Arthur Tjandra enjoys his works and enjoys creating masterpieces, and he wants to share his joy with others. Most surgeons only showcase their best results. And when they do, it is always after full recovery from the surgeries. You are not shown what happens in between. And almost all the time, the results are shown in the form of photographs, which of course may or may not have been edited! Hence, when you see one single particularly excellent result showcased by a surgeon and nothing else, you may not want to jump into a conclusion too fast. Because the skill and expertise needed to create one masterpiece out of 100 surgeries is definitely not the same as the skill needed to create one masterpiece out of every 2 surgeries! Dr Arthur Tjandra aims to publish ALL videos of his surgeries, if only all of his patient would be so kind to sign the consent forms!
Hence, if you are a returning patient and had signed photographic/videographic consent, you would have been given a set of all the videos taken before, during and after your surgeries. Please upload those videos to any video-sharing platforms whether you like the result or not, whether they are good or not. We are not afraid of showing bad results because we want to be as transparent as possible. And if you do so, you will be rewarded with subsidized rates when you return for subsequent surgeries. However, we also understand that you may be a busy executive and time is extremely precious for you and you do not mind paying a little bit more rather than wasting time uploading videos. The choice is yours.
We will still continue with our effort to upload the videos we have now, although as we have mentioned earlier, it may take 27 to 38 years to upload the ones we currently have, excluding the ones we are going to shoot tomorrow and the days after tomorrow. But, if you find that your videos have already been uploaded by us, you are not required to upload them anymore to enjoy subsidized rates as long as you sign photographic/videographic consent!
So far, only one…..only ONE out of the thousands of patients we have, who uploads her videos to video-sharing platform. She is patient No. 369, whose case studies have been published on our blog here:
Patient No. 369: Whole body transformation. Session 2: Arms liposuction on an athlete.
Not only does she upload her videos, but she also puts so much effort in blogging about her experience: Project Curvylicious.
She can be assured of not only subsidized rates when she returns for her subsequent session in 2017, but also VVIP treatment by Dr Arthur Tjandra and his team. With all the exposure she puts on herself now, and people scrutinizing her blog to look at the result of Dr Arthur Tjandra‘s surgery, do you think he will allow the result of her next surgery to be just mediocre? With all the exposure she puts with her blog now, he must produce a masterpiece, no matter what! Hence, it makes sense to blog, because you are basically pushing your surgeon to one corner and say, “All eyes are on you now. So, are you going to put your magical hands on me and create another masterpiece?”