Coral Sea Dreaming

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    Coral Sea Dreaming is the main feature, but there are a number of additional shorts to pad out the running time of this DVD, of varying interest; Wetlands, Surfin' Dolphins, Ocean Moods, Undersea Breeze, and Sea Lions. Sea Lions is great, and Surfin' Dolphins is mind-boggling - this is something you have to see for yourself before you will believe your eyes.

    One thing that I wonder about with this DVD is its replay value, particularly considering the lack of any additional educational material on the DVD. A voice-over commentary would have probably added to its educational value, too. Still, for me, Surfin' Dolphins was worth the price of admission on its own, and if undersea video footage is your "thing", then there is plenty here for you to enjoy.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The first few minutes of this transfer is not great, with little in the way of detail and a blurred, wobbly image. Fortunately, this rapidly improves and for the most part, this transfer is reasonably sharp and clear given the subject material and the limitations of underwater photography. Really fine image details are lost as a result of the inherent lack of resolution of the NTSC format. This is particularly evident during the Garden Eels sequence, where the fine surface markings of the eels are impossible to make out, but for the most part there is plenty of detail on offer here. Some of the shots are poorly lit and hence detail is lost in these shots, but the majority of the footage is well-lit and well-defined, again within the limitations imposed by the NTSC video system.

    Surfin' Dolphins had a minor problem visually - the brightness seemed to vary up and down occasionally in a slightly disconcerting fashion.

    Shadow detail is variable, but tends to be somewhat lacking, which is pretty much a characteristic of this type of underwater photography. Low level noise was essentially absent, except for some rare pieces of older footage.

    The colours were beautifully rendered, with all shades of the rainbow on display here. There is no colour bleeding nor chroma noise to mar the beauty of these often wildly-coloured images.

    There were no MPEG artefacts noted, and only some very occasional video artefacts marred the image slightly, such as between 4:14 and 4:18.

    There is a subtitle track present, which, when activated, offers up the name of the particular animal or plant that you are looking at on-screen at the time. Much more could have been made of this subtitle track, as was ably demonstrated whilst viewing the shipwreck sequence, where some additional facts and figures are presented via the subtitles. These substantially enhanced the enjoyment and understanding of that particular sequence, and it would have been nice if this idea had been carried through the entire programme.

Audio

    There is no dialogue, and hence no opportunity for audio sync problems to make themselves apparent. There was a slight audio dropout at 22:51.

    The music for the main feature is by Tania Rose, and is suitably ambient and relaxing. It is predominantly mixed across the front channels, with some ambient echo in the rear. There are few specific directional cues here, with the overall emphasis on a soothing, New Age-style accompaniment to the on-screen visuals. The subwoofer gently supported the music from time-to-time but generally had very little to do.

Menu

Crew Bios

Notes

Trailer - Earthlight

DVD-ROM: Screensaver

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is good.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna (read my bio)
28th June 2000