This is the final show of the Brave Tour, which was broadcast as a Pay Per View event in Mexico. My source is a first generation VHS copy of the concert that was recorded from this broadcast, that "marilbil" was kind enough to lend to me.

I had previously put this show to DVD from another higher generation source, and entitled it Mad For Mexico. I never officially released the previous version, as the quality wasn't up to the standards that I've tried to set for my releases. The colors were washed out, and ghosted in places and the picture was dark. I did have it on my trade list however, so there are some copies circulating.

For this version, I have used the same title, but added the "Diamond Edition" moniker, to differentiate it from the poorer quality version.

That said, the picture still isn't quite as crisp as one would expect from a 1st generation copy. I attribute this to the age of the tape, and the fact that it has been played numerous times to make copies for other traders. In addition, I don't know how good the original broadcast quality was. The close-ups have nice clarity. It is just the full stage shots that seem to be a bit fuzzy. Perhaps this has something to do with the quality of the camera used for the full stage shots, rather than anything to do with the video tape. Still, I believe this is likely to be the best version of this video that you are going to see, unless someone is able to produce a DVD from a master recording of the broadcast.

The audio was definitely recorded in Hi-Fi, yet it appears to be in mono. Either that, or it has an extremely narrow sound field. The audio on the video tape was a little dull and lifeless, so I did some sound processing to give it a little more punch. The high and low ends were low in the mix, and the vocals were hollow. Because of the audio remastering, there are a few spots where the vocals sound a bit harsh now, but this was the price to be paid for bringing out some of the punch that was lacking in the audio. In my opinion, the audio now sounds quite decent.

The running time of disc 1 is longer than disc 2. This was done on purpose. As the band was playing Brave in its entirely, I didn't want to interrupt the flow of that album by cutting it in the middle. Steve stops after Falling From the Moon to introduce the band, before launching into "Made Again", and I used this interruption in the music to make the cut between the two discs. Because of the length of disc one, I used a two pass variable bit rate to encode disc 1 to fit more material into the space, and still have good quality. As disc two was under an hour, I was able to use a high constant bit rate.

Overall, I was pleased with the final result. I have had several versions of this show, and this is by far the best. It is a worthy addition to any Marillion video collection.

Duley - April 2005