(1990)

When I suffered an injury and could not return to work, I decided to go back to college and I wasn’t sure what to do next.  I had already gotten into taking lots of family videos of my own with various camcorders so I had something to remember the family by when I was gone three weeks at a time, sometimes longer on the road.  I thought about what skills I do have, my physical limitations, and that I have a family of five I would like to see more of in the future than I have for so many years.  I sometimes felt I was missing things and couldn’t even have a memory in my mind of what my kids were doing to take with me.  I remember the feeling of seeing the old videos that my parents shot, and thought this would be a great calling for me to follow to shoot and edit film professionally.   It has not been an easy road to take to accomplish what would be needed, and to feel like I was doing the right thing with my life and trying something completely different that may just be looked at as foolish by many of my friends and family.  There is a way to make a living for many types of video, audio, and cinema talent but it does not come to you.  As even my truck driving trainer said to me during my training, “You can make tons of money and get the good loads, but they wont just get handed to you.  You have to want it.”  There are some people that whole heartedly believe that the chosen career they are in is what they should do and realize there is a need for it and a future if you work at it and believe.  All you have to do is really want it.

(2006)

Even when I worked, let’s say for legal purposes “70 hours a week” as a truck driver, I still did a lot of video editing, and made slideshows with pictures on my laptop during my little breaks.  I never saw the “work” involved as much as I replenished myself by spending time creating memories I could watch over and over.

(2007)

(2010-Back in college again/still from a class video)

Now, onto the review.  And why I am excited about this software should now be apparent…

I learned to use several types of software for video editing, and making slideshows.  Some were bundled with cameras and things, and were simple to use but did not have a lot of features and seemed to use way too much of my laptop’s resources.  I don’t recall the bundled software that made me decide enough was enough any more, but it had a huge problem syncing music with pictures and video.  The first software I found to pull this off quite well though, was Camtasia.  Since the developers of Camtasia are local (located in Okemos, MI), I will give them a free shoutout and Camtasia users will know why I was so happy with it, and may wonder after a while where are all those features that make some of the awesome, film like videos out there?  A popular answer is Sony Vegas.  Sony is great, and I use DVD Architect.

(Quick Note:  Was very happy to see after uninstalling Edius 5, the start screen for Edius 6 still had all my projects and I like this start screen much better than the one in Edius 5!)

I will not be able to say which is “THE” best video editing software out there.  But from trying several in a crunch to find something that opened multiple formats from several popular filmmaking cameras and accomplish my visual goals & complete my assignments in a timely manner, Edius was the sigh of relief I needed.  Avid Media Composer just took too long, and I’d lose work sometimes in a crash on both Macs and PCs.  Sony Vegas wouldn’t open the file format I needed.  Adobe Premiere never looked right when I played it back and was very very slow.  Forget trying to do much in Camtasia besides making cuts.  Once I found Edius, it just kept getting better and better as I looked around and tried things with it.  When that 30 day demo was ticking away, I had to get it.  I purchased Edius 5 through Gradware and never looked back at another program to get started with my edits.

I always felt like I was in control, that whatever I wanted to do with color correction, white balance, and transitions was an extension of myself.

There were a few things missing though since I had the Educational discount edition of Edius 5.  The bonus software disc with NewBlue Effects and things were absent.  I still went into Camtasia occasionally for audio leveling and things.

I wanted so badly to pick up Edius 6 since it came out, but I also needed to keep expanding my business so I could accomplish the shots that clients desired.  Edius 5 worked great, and a lot of the features that are still Edius 6 you should definitely play with and see what they do.  But it’s always nice to see what the interpretation of “Auto Contrast” is before going overboard with it manually.  Luckily, I already have tons of footage where I can compare what I did without the extra plugins to what the plugins’ presets do.  Some of them take me down to earth a bit, and some of them push the concepts further that I was afraid to do.  There’s always a creative decision to make.  But if you aren’t sure, you can quickly let the presets decide and check/uncheck the filter and look at it in real time and see which one you like better.

Off topic a bit, I wouldn’t have even known about the great piece of video gear known as the Konova Slider if not for seeing what people actually thought was impressive looking and professional video.  The solutions I knew of for such stable video included rails and extra setup time and in some cases as a one man crew would be impossible anyway.  In a similar manner, the NewBlue Effects included with Edius 6 try to accomplish the most popular looks and much needed edits and effects that clients expect.  Edius runs very fast, one person can get tons of edits and creative effects completed and meet deadlines.  Every second counts, and you will save a lot of time using Edius over software like Adobe Premiere.  Spare time to make more money, and spend time with your family is invaluable.

Edius 6 offers a complete video and audio solution, including iZotope audio effects.  You can experiment with sound effects and even get your feet wet with mastering reverb and other things that are an audio engineer’s dream.  I have been using Pro Tools for a lot of things before I bring my sounds and music into my videos.  I am also a long time VST audio plugin user, from many years of using Cakewalk.  VST is the most compatible type of audio plugin, and several are included.

iZotope is not just another company that tries to include audio effects in their products.  They are very well known for their software being used in audio engineering classes at some of the top colleges in the country.  Part of my training in my Digital Media, Audio, and Cinema classes included audio editing and was very exciting but we were limited to using Pro Tools and I never did get to touch iZotope software so that really caught my eye.

I am very glad that I was able to explore on my own some plugins in between Edius 5 and 6.  I found some ok solutions for cleaning up video and stabilizing it.  It was kind of a chore, and very time consuming since I used some plugins in a program called VirtualDub.  DeShaker for stabilizing, and Neat Video for cleaning up noisy footage at least were in existence as solutions for me on a low budget.  I thought perhaps it was time to “go the budget way” and put up with the hours and hours of one frame per second analyzing and processing.  Then I thought, “I need another laptop for this!”  That’s not very cost effective.

The proDAD Mercalli 2.0 plugin is mind-blowingly fast.  I found it to be from eight to twelve times faster than DeShaker.  I liked the little GUI.  This is so much easier to explain to future employees to use than VirtualDub plugins and settings.  Another point for “time saved=money=family time.”

The NewBlue Touchup filter is the Neat Video type plugin I needed.  As you are looking at these plugins in Edius, you can access the help file (question mark) in the plugin at any time and there are videos that play and very simple to understand instructions and explanations of just what they do.  The clip for Touchup shows a close-up of someone’s face and every plugin shows some type of “before/after” example.  If you don’t like to read, you can probably figure out in a few seconds what does what by viewing that help file.

In between video clips, it is always good to add a transition.  On some transitions you will see a “D” on them for “default.”  These are not “boring default if you aren’t sure what to do here” type transitions.  These are industry standards like a simple 2D dissolve.  I use those a lot, and they look great.  Sometimes I bring in my JPEGS of matching 1920×1080 black and white backgrounds so I can dissolve to those (fade in/out).  It is always good to think of what you want to transition to to close a scene and end the video.

There are so many transitions, it is almost overwhelming but once you click on one it will show a little animation so you can decide before you add it to the timeline (usually right clicking and adding it to the currently selected clip).

Some of my favorite transitions are “peel” for a page turning effect (or to create an opening/revealing effect), explosions (the end of the clip just explodes like the Death Star in Star Wars), waves & flags (love the ripple effect that makes everything appear under water so I extend that one a lot so it lasts longer), and a new one I see that comes in the bonus proDAD package, a great Vitascene transition.

Vitascene effects (non transitional) opens up the largest plugin GUI so that you can look through the features and still see the effect on your video.  It has some very much requested dreamy film looks and solutions.  You can adjust the look to create continuity between clips that were shot on different days with different types of daylight that might reveal the “video magic” of shooting things that were supposed to happen seamlessly.

Another great plugin for continuity is the NewBlue Dual Booster.  The help file shows a video to demonstrate ways you could use this to even take a daytime shot and make it appear to be well after the sun has gone down.  Very nice!  (Lots of the screenshots I used are from the help file because it is so well done!)

If you use consumer DSLR for video, or camcorders (some even as you upgrade toward “prosumer”) you still have a rolling shutter effect.  I notice this on DSLR more than camcorders.  If you move the camera and it seems like your eyes are having a hard time tracking the details in a video, it is most likely the rolling shutter effect happening.  NewBlue includes a rolling shutter correction plugin, and once you get to the point where you notice this it will be a must have.  The proDAD Mercalli plugin also includes some rolling shutter correction as to take a video walking around, and especially driving around, there will be a lot of shaking and things that will make it hard for your eyes to watch.

The NewBlue Detail Enhancer plugin does a great job of restoring details that you will lose with depth of field.  You may not even notice a depth of field effect until you see the difference.  You will have to be careful how you use the plugin as I chose a scene where the detail was lost quite a bit because I did not use a fast enough shutter, so there was a lot of motion blur.  There is a way around this through keying and combining your detail enhanced video track with the original and most likely a way to select the parts of the video to work with. But it’s always good to see just what a multitrack video looks like and what keyers can do for you.

Before & After NewBlue Detail Enhancer:

My favorite keyers from Edius 5 were the ones that allowed certain things to come through like types of light.  Those you will have to see for yourself for your particular needs.  To add keys, you have to click on the video clip toward the bottom.  Your clips will have three parts you can click on, the top being the video (most of the time you will use that), the middle being the audio, and the very bottom and thin line is where you add a keyer to let the program know it needs to look for information from another track.  You can key in pictures, graphics, and even other videos for multitracking.  It’s not really very hard at all to do but will take some experimenting to find out what they all do.

The NewBlue Video Essentials keyers included really blew me away.  I had not seen these before.  The split screen worked so well I had to do a double take because it was so seamless looking.  If you are careful to keep some of your subjects on one side of the screen you could mix and match scenes with different backgrounds, perhaps another part of the location with more trees or less things in the background.

The Title Tool is easy to use and keys itself for you and you can create transitions and fades.  There are some creative looking fonts filled with textures and useful options for creating shadows and depth to your titles, and they are very fast to make & align.  Once you create your text, you can drag it around and stretch it as needed.

One of the things that caught my eye with Edius 6 was a video on Youtube by EdiusMagic called “01. Using the New Mask Filter in EDIUS 6.”  I really wanted to jump in and do this first as I was very excited to see the preview video but am going to watch this some more and see what I can pull off.  I have an idea already that I’d like to try, but this is the one feature that is a little over my head, but if you are familiar with Photoshop editing it should make perfect sense.

Grass Valley Live has lots of videos, one that got me pumped up before my review copy of Edius 6 arrived was “Amazing Video Editing: EDIUS 6 from Grass Valley.”  And that “new freehand curve mask” part with the elephant where they moved it to a new clip.

There are so many things to do, and more than I will use at the moment and there’s where I like to be.  Using multiple cameras and monitors will hopefully be something I will use in the future to save even more time and accomplish something I haven’t before.

(Screenshot from a clip using Detail Enhancer and Color Fixer Plus for the entire shot, and Pixelator on the license plate which is a very small target and not an issue in this clip but was easy to target and blur out).

Gradient Tint should cure me of my over coloring to enhance greens for grass and blues for skies.

A quick example of keying in different backgrounds via Split Screen Keying:

It’s so nice to be able to jump in and use Edius, and learn as you go.  There’s a little tip I need to let you know about exporting your video though.  There’s an icon just below the video preview window that will allow you to “print” your final product.  You will use “print to file” to open up a window that gives you encoding options.  Since I like to have a lossless file and create multiple formats for DVD, media players, Facebook, and many different devices, I use the “Canopus Lossless” format.  It will create a very large file, but you will not only have a perfect copy of your edit but will also be able to bring that back into Edius later and edit it as if it were your raw clips.  Occasionally, I will have so many plugins going and could easily just select the whole thing and “render” it so it plays perfectly, but I like to skip that and make my lossless file so I can create my renders and start uploading as fast as possible and it seems a little easier to work with multiple video tracks that way.  Sometimes, I kill all the plugins and make a lossless file that has my raw video look and key that in.

There are so many ways to get to a unique, high quality, professional looking and sounding video.  Anything you might think of will always have a solution with Grass Valley’s Edius software.

Edius software is simply amazingly fast and powerful, I can’t say enough about it.  Try it out!

One of the good things about that class is that we got to practice our gourmet cuts, like brunoise and julienne. For some of us it had been a while. I just thought this class was so neat and we got to take our pieces home. Of course chef’s plate looked like something right out of Japan

My daughter claimed mine. I took video before she took it from me

We also went to Detroit on a culinary field trip recently. We started at Oakland Community College where they were having a cooking competition,

then we went to some butcher shops in East Village. Not that cool of a place for a recently converted pescatarian! But chef loved it

Then it was off to Astoria Patry Shop in Greek Town – The Napoleon was AMAZING.

Finally we had a bite at Il Pueblo in Mexicantown. I wanted SHRIMP, they were out..on a friday night? I TRIED to stomach the chicken but got sick. Yeah I am done with meat I think. But the flavor of the marinade was great.

The most recent class we had we made Pate en Croute, which is pate encased in dough. The meat I used was a Brazilian spiced mix. They are long rectangular loafs. I would show you a photo but they are in the freezer at school since we have that class once a week AND this is spring break so its 2 weeks before we get to slice them. I bet they will look fantastic. I won’t be tasting it, but I am sure I will be making everyone else try it to see how I did. And of course share the photo with you all.

It is strange, really, how just a couple years in a culinary program has placed me in the path of wonderful people and experiences, and sad ones too. I am thinking I might be the only geek that will be sad when the kitchen closes. Not so much because of the physical but because of the implications. The college really made a huge mistake eliminating the culinary program, as in MILLIONS OF DOLLARS worth of a mistake. I feel so badly for the students behind me that wanted to get into the program so badly but couldn’t because they wouldn’t have time. The absolute worst part of this in my opinion, is that the chef that changed my entire life, the one that opened my eyes and inspired me so much that my future was changed, has told me because of what the college did to him, he no longer has any interest in teaching.

I can’t imagine a world where he isn’t teaching, he is so passionate about his job and food that it rubbed off on me and look at me now! I think its a travesty that he won’t be teaching. I know he will do what he needs to for his kid, and I hope that down the road he remembers that he promised not to forget about me. It may have only been a couple years or so in the program but the time I put n was so much more. I was there to volunteer, to attend meetings, to protest against the college and try to save our program. I am always early to class and the last to leave. It may not mean as much to him or anyone else but THAT PROGRAM is all I know right now. I know I will be in a kitchen somewhere that will be amazing. It will be hard to work with another chef that won’t fill his shoes.

Of course it looks like I am completely emotionally involved in my culinary journey and it is true to a point. I am allowed to feel a little since it is merely college at this level. Obviously I wouldn’t have the same banter if I were working with Thomas Keller. But what I am learning is that this short journey has filled me with so many experiences that I am so grateful for. I have gained confidence. I have gained a few friends. even if they do laugh at me when i get emotional about everything ending they accept that I am passionate and love me for it. They also say that this college stuff is just a tiny blip on my journey map. It may be true. But I will say I am going to be sad if I have to say goodbye to the chef for good in two months. I’ve spent as much time in college with him both learning and doing club things etc that I have at home with my family. Its almost been a part time job. That underwhelming kitchen at LCC has been my 2nd home for almost 2 years. I don’t care about the kitchen but I do care about the chefs!

So, now that I don’t know where my destination will be at the end of this culinary journey, I do know that the next journey I take in the real world of culinary will be interesting, happy, sad, exciting and adventurous all in one, and maybe even more so than my school. I just hope my family is okay with traveling because I sense a lot of that in our future!

But life for me, in general, since the new year began especially is amazing. Not because of the blog but just my general zen about life and my zest for it. I can’t imagine waking up and not loving every second of my life. I just don’t have past baggage or drama that makes me sad or anything and I am so grateful for that. My health may not always be with me but after having the flu for like a month I am now feeling GREAT. And mentally I am fantastic. I don’t let anyone dictate my emotions and feelings but me, I had relied on acceptance from others before but I haven’t for a while and I think that may be the reason I am excelling. I am heading places I worked very very very hard to get to, sacrificed getting to stay home with my youngest child to make it happen.

It is amazing how freeing it is to get rid of negativity and move on. Seriously there is a gal I used to dread seeing and I would pretend we were cool but in time I realized she doesn’t have friends and isn’t trying to hurt me and I reached out to her to be a friend. With my journey ending soon at college and everyone moving on, keeping a couple friends from the program is welcomed.

I have learned that you just have to absolutely find the BEST in every day and do NOT let toxic people in your life. If all they do is complain and talk crap about everyone and get bipolar on you at the drop of a hat, get rid of them! And keep your mind open to receive what the universe has for you. I know I am destined for something MUCH bigger than my 2 years as a culinary student. I will be certified by the only organization recognized in the US, which means I can say officially I know what I am talking about. That is just the first step. Something will happen for me on a national scale I can FEEL it.

And lastly I am happy to report that I have lost 20 lbs recently by giving up pop and energy drinks as well as cutting carbs some and going on a Pescetarian diet. No meat, just fish. I didn’t eat much meat anyway (tummy issues mostly) and I have been feeling great. Lots more water lately. I want to lose another 20 to get to my goal weight. Not bragging about how freaking awesome my life is, but you read enough posts about drama and health problems and married people problems and babies, I felt it was a good time to post GOOD stuff. I love my life, even the bad apples in the past taught me a lesson. I just wish I could bottle up my contentment for days when I am not so happy. Like Mondays.

I am usually super happy about the great photos I share and proud of my work even when I show him. My strawberry cupcakes recently got rave reviews online. What everyone said made me feel great, and strengthened the idea that I could do food photography on the side. I showed the same photo to my chef and didn’t say I did them or took the photo. Without batting an eye he said I bet they tasted good but it looks like it was designed by a food photographer. I was like what??? I said to him “Are you saying I can do better? He said most definitely, that my picture and cakes were great for food photography and Betty Crocker. Imagine my face if you will, he knew that one hurt a little!! But see the difference here folks is that even if it sounded mean, he was absolutely right. He knows I have been trained to make Brunoise cuts, he asked why I didn’t do that on the cupcakes. He KNOWS I can do better because he has seen me do better.

What I make at home and take great pictures of is designed for a great photo, and I say this because I do a LOT of dessert and I don’t sit and eat it all so lately its been about perfecting the cupcakes as a creative outlet. It works, its my realm and I get to practice both decorating and photography. But I am not a pastry chef, I have never studied under one, and I shouldn’t be expecting sensational comments on a very beginner level of pastry. You may think I am being hard on myself but its not completely true. In the culinary world there is competition everywhere you look, in addition to actual real sanctioned competitions. I am still not ready to compete no matter how good I think I am I can’t go up against people yet.

Let this be a lesson that when you think you have done your best there will always be someone that thinks you can do a little better and will push you to try. I feel grateful that not only does my chef not lie to me but the fact is he only pushes the students that he knows have something special. If he didn’t care he wouldn’t say anything but he does. And I need to stop playing it safe and start thinking outside the box, 4 star dining style. Cupcakes are still fun but I can do better.

We did ice carving in my Garde Manger class last weekend and my team, the girls team, made this butterfly and a swan, but the chef accidentally decapitated the swan with the chainsaw.

There is one thing I need to mention and that is that I am so happy I am taking THIS class because Chef Nick said at the beginning of class that we would be required to do plate presentations from now on. This means all that artistry that I didn’t learn from class last semester will have a chance to enter my brain this semester. I nearly hugged the chef when he said it and of course had to explain to him why I am so happy. He wasn’t very pleased when I told him what happened. But we get along so well. I was nervous he is pretty acclaimed and a bit of a celeb around Lansing but he is funny and smart.

In my class there is one other guy that has been through the program and this is his last class, everyone else is new. It feels weird to be the 2nd year know it all sometimes but hey I know where everything is and little secrets, and I don’t mind helping anyone so it makes it fun. So far there is only 6 or 7 people in the class though. its nice its not crowded! I think my favorite, aside from cooking PRETTY food again, is the fact he is teaching us authentic recipes.

Without further ado I will just go ahead and share what we made. As a class we each had to make 2 dishes for a total of 12. I made the Caprese..

and Tiramisu. I have made Caprese before but Tiramisu was completely new for me, I hadn’t even TASTED it prior. It is SO good!!’ My caprese has olive oil, this one has balsamic vinegar.

(Caprese Salad, Peach Cobbler, Risotto, Spaghetti Squash with lime and basil, Prosciutto Melon, Three Pasta, Tiramisu, Seafood moule (stew), Potato Gnocchi, Pasta Carbonara)

I can’t even find the word for how much I love my Garde Manger class. The kicker? it was only the first class! But its pure artistry. And the best part is there is no sweating involved. Well that might not be true we have ice carving in a few weeks and I might work up a sweat under the winter gear! Tonight we did some beginning carving and I found it all to be fittign of a tropical island. Or maybe I just wanted to be on a tropical island. you see, I woke up to this:

And also today is my 16th wedding anniversary. Carving some fruit was a nice escape!

Today we carved:

Pineapple Fish

Tomato Rose

Cucumber Bowl

Carrot Palm Tree

(radish flower there in the background)

Apple Bird

Lemon Basket

And this is just the beginning folks. I can’t express how happy I am that I HAVE CHEF BACK!!!

For all intents and purposes, before you read any further, I need you to understand 2 things; 1 – These are my opinions, I am not getting paid to speak them, I am not a lobbyist and I am not going to earn extra credit in class even. I am writing my feelings, my own feelings, one sided. 2 – I am not a nutritionist, activist, biologist, environmental scientist, and technically I am not a certified chef, I am not an expert. I am a culinary student who is forever learning every day and these last few semesters opened my eyes to an entire world of things I didn’t know both good and bad, but all things I am grateful to have learned a little more about. Without further ado, I watched these movies and they moved me, I hope you might watch them too and if you feel compelled to do something, that you will reach out and volunteer to make a difference.

1. The Cove : This is a tear jerker, especially for animal lovers and dolphin lovers. It is about the mass murders of thousands of Dolphins in Japan. I threw up in my mouth a little when they sold dolphin meat illegally and tried to pass it off as shark meat. I’ve never been to Sea World and after this movie I never ever will.

2. Dirt – This one is about how something so simple and natural, DIRT, has been replaced by modernization and how its impacting the environment. A couple things I noted as interesting, the amount of asphalt on the earth absorbing heat from the sun is pretty high, and also the stupidity of people, who will say “If there is no concrete, where will the children play?” Um, I have a driveway and all for bike riding and basketball its fine but my kids play in the yard where the DIRT is. Dirt is an amazing life giving thing.

3. End of the Line – This one shocked me, I had absolutely NO idea that the oceans were being over fished. Entire species are being wiped out at alarming rates. We don’t eat a lot of fish because my son is allergic to fish, his skin breaks out badly in eczema patches and when he was a very little guy, he couldn’t be around when it was being cooked because his throat would start to close. He grew out of that but we still eat very little fish. At any rate if something doesn’t get done about people taking fish and not putting any back to replenish, there won’t be any left.

4. Fresh : this one is about how farmers and companies have started to come together to try and change the model. its become industrial and chemicals, when it should have stayed pure and organic, and sustainable. It touched on monocrops and how bad they are because if one pest learns how to penetrate and infect a crop it will take the entrie thing out. I enjoyed the section that talked about sustainable farming that used hydroponics with fish to create an all inclusive biosphere. Ok it wasn’t a biosphere but this guy created a way to water and get the plants nutrients without using chemicals. And he also talked about how dirt is so important and the worms. It was fascinating.

5. Vanishing of the Bees – This is another one that completely shocked me! We don’t consume honey here at home but I know I use it in cooking classes with some sauces. I was just shocked when I watched this one, then realized that we don’t have ANY honeybees around us we have hornets and even a couple orange and black ones came around which I suspect were the African bees that are killing the honeybees. I cried at this one too because one of the men cried about the state of the bee crisis.

Many people don’t realize that this stuff is happening. They don’t know the reason why honey costs a fortune at the store they just pay it and complain. I know this because that was me at one time. I think the thread that ties all of these movies together for me is that we are living beings, on a living planet, and we are abusing ourselves with what we eat, we are abusing the planet with the changes we are making to the soil and the oceans. I think that the Earth is getting pissed off and its starting to fight back, judging by the amount of Earthquakes this year alone. We are all given the gift of life and the right to live on this planet but abusing that right by taking power over the animals and plants and air is going to kill us eventually. it might not happen for 100 years, but it will because we as an advanced life form have no fear of any living organism except other humans. If we could all try a little harder to respect ourselves, the Earth, and the plants and creatures on it, we might just have a longer existence on this planet.

I know I saw some disturbing things in these documentaries but I am glad that my eyes were opened to these things because I had no idea. I won’t become a vegan overnight and I can’t commit to flying around the world at the drop of a hat to protest but I do have this blog and if i can change one person’s way of thinking by sharing what was shared with me then I know I helped.