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General		Extras
Category	Music	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1999	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	66:07 minutes	Other Extras	Photo Gallery (12 photos) Biography-Charlotte Church Discography Featurette-Meet Charlotte Church (2:14) Featurette-Backstage With Charlotte Church (25:34)
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	David Mallet
Studio Distributor	Sony Classical Sony Music	Starring	Charlotte Church
Case	Amaray
RRP	$34.95	Music	Various

    The songs themselves tend to be a little on the short side, and a little on the simple side, but most enjoyable nonetheless. A word of warning: there is less than 40 minutes of actual music on this DVD. The remainder of the running time is padded out by behind-the-scenes footage which book-ends the actual concert footage.

    The tracks on this DVD consist of;
 

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. Unlike many Sony Music DVDs, this one is formatted in PAL, and appears to have been sourced in PAL judging by the lack of NTSC to PAL conversion artefacts.

    The transfer is relatively soft, mainly as a result of the lighting scheme, which features predominantly blue lighting. Charlotte Church stands out in her predominately red outfit. There is not a lot of fine detail visible in this transfer, with the red-blue transitions of the image blurring the sharp delineation between foreground and background. Shadow detail is lacking, but this can be attributed to the lighting scheme. Low level noise intruded into the image periodically, marring some of the darker areas of the image. This was a tad disappointing, as this type of artefact is rarely seen today in the world of digital video.

    The colour scheme, as previously mentioned, is predominately highly saturated blues and reds. Some chroma noise mars the image, particularly in some of the larger fields of blue, but remains at an acceptable level at all times.

    There were no MPEG artefacts noted in this transfer. There were no video artefacts noted in this transfer.

Audio

    The vocals during the first track (Meet Charlotte Church) were quite variable in their directionality, varying from being confined totally within the centre speaker to spread right across the front soundstage. This worried me, and I was concerned that the concert proper would be another bad Sony 5.1 mix, but fortunately, this was not to be the case. The concert footage has Charlotte Church's vocals firmly centred, with some pleasing spread to the left and right front speakers which broadened the sound stage, as well as ambient vocals spread into the rear channels. There were no audio sync problems.

    The surround channels were used for music and for ambience. The music and choir singing were predominately mixed into the left and right channels, separating them nicely from Charlotte Church's vocals in the centre channel. As with the vocal track, some ambience from the music and choir made its way into the rear channels. The overall effect of this soundtrack was of a pleasingly balanced, immersive soundtrack. In short, this soundtrack is a good example of a non-aggressive, well-balanced 5.1 concert soundtrack ought to sound.

    The .1 channel was used to support the music subtly without calling undue attention to itself..

Photo Gallery

Biography - Charlotte Church

Discography

Featurette-Meet Charlotte Church (2:14)

Featurette-Backstage With Charlotte Church (25:34)

    The video quality is acceptable but not great.

    The audio quality is quite good..

    There are limited extras.
 

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna (read my bio)
14th June 2000