The filmer of this show was kind enough to lend me his master Hi-8mm video tape for the conversion to DVD. The filmer is sitting just about dead center, in the balcony, so he looks at a downward angle toward the stage, giving a nice view of the band, with no obstructions other than an occassional fan who stands up for a moment. The camera is hand held, so not as steady as a tripod shot would be. However, the filmer holds the camera relatively steady throughout, with some occassional shakiness. The filmer remains focused on the band, with no sudden jerks or zooms. Zooms and moving around the stage is done slowly, making it look more professional. The colors are good, and the picture remains in focus, and sharp. Overall, a nice job for a handheld film.

In order to fit the show on a single disc, I encoded with a two pass variable bit rate, calculated in advance to fill the entire disc, to maximize the video quality.

The audio is also quite nice. Generally, I find that audio captured with a video camera mic system tends to be flat and often distorted. I often try to find an alternate audio source to match to an audience shot video. However, in this case, the camera mics did a fine job. I asked the filmer if he had external mics and a battery box hooked up to his camera, but he said that he just used the mics built into the camera. The recording has a nice stereo feel to it. The amazing thing to me about the audio was how rich the bass sounds. Its the type of bass that you feel more than you hear. If you have a subwoofer hooked up to your system, crank this loud on your stereo, and just feel the low end wash over you. The mix is quite nice. Every instrument is distinct, and clear. The only downfall are the vocals, which sound not that clear, as they echo. I attribute this to the venue, rather than any fault of the recorder. Listening to this, I suspect this sounds quite similar to how it would have sounded in the venue that night. The audio sounded quite nice right from the tape, and while I did tweak the audio a bit, I really didn't do that much to it, as it sounded pretty good as is. So, while this is not the best sounding audience recording I have heard, it still is very nice, and if not for the vocals, would have sounded excellent. In order to fit this show onto a single disc, and allow the highest bit rate I could for the video, I converted the audio to Dolby Digital AC3. However, I used a high bit rate for the audio, and it sounds almost indistinguishable from the PCM wav file.

Given the fact that this is from a master tape, shot from a nice position, minimal obstructions, clear with nice closeups, and decent sound, this is definately a DVD you would want in your collection. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a tripod, and clearer vocals.

Duley - July 2005