Celine Dion

The Colour Of My Love Concert


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Details At A Glance

General
Extras
Category Music Theatrical Trailer(s) No
Rating Other Trailer(s) No
Year Released 1995 Commentary Tracks No
Running Time 66:49 minutes Other Extras Discography
RSDL/Flipper No
Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region 1,2,3,4,5,6 Director Tony Greco
Studio
Distributor
Sony Music Entertainment
Starring Celine Dion
Peabo Bryson
Clive Griffin
RRP $34.95 Music Celine Dion

  
Video
Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame MPEG None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None Dolby Digital 5.1
16x9 Enhancement No Soundtrack Languages English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 448Kb/s)
English (Linear PCM 2.0, 1536Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio 1.33:1
Miscellaneous
Macrovision Yes Smoking No
Subtitles English Lyrics
French Lyrics
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits Yes

Plot Synopsis

   Let me get this off my chest first - Celine Dion is not really my bag, but my wife loves her, and she quite likes this disc. And, I do like some of her songs - so here are my thoughts!

    The song list runs a little something like this - Everybody's Talkin' My Baby Down, Love Can Move Mountains, If You Asked Me To, Only One Road, Ce N'Etait Qu'un Reve, Misled, Think Twice, Where Does My Heart Beat Now, When I Fall In Love, Refuse To Dance, The Power Of Love, Beauty And The Beast, I Can't Help Falling In Love (Live), The Colour Of My Love

    What we have is Celine doing her thing, with the occasional dancers behind her, and a few token band members pretending to play instruments. It's all show, and really this is a studio album with some live visuals to complement it. I have no doubt that Celine fans will love this disc, but be warned that this is not strictly a concert performance in that it is not live (save for one song).

Transfer Quality

Video

    This DVD is pretty ordinary in the video department, and was quite a disappointment.

    The concert was captured by video cameras, and as a result the transfer is 1.33:1 and not 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is variably sharp, at best being reasonable during close-ups, and at worst being extremely soft and indistinct during long shots. Clearly, the camera on the long shots is of a lesser quality or is configured strangely, because it is really blurry. On the whole, clarity is bearable but not what we should expect from DVD. It is also important to note that the source for this DVD is composite, which is a far cry from the component system DVD supports natively. This results in reducing the clarity to VHS levels, and since this is a full-frame disc, there really is nothing compelling in the video department above and beyond VHS tape. Contrast is on the low side, giving the image a somewhat bland appearance. Shadow detail is fair. There is a propensity of low-level noise during the concert, but this is attributable to MPEG artefacting which I will describe below and is not part of the video source.

    Colours are slightly recessed in vividness, though natural looking for the most part. Blue features fairly heavily in the lighting, and it is handled averagely, with only slightly less noise than you would expect from VHS, and is only slightly over-saturated (it being the only over-saturated colour)..

    The main culprit for chroma and luminance noise is not from the source, but from the very low bit-rate compression. When the image is still, everything is fine, but any movement of the camera or objects within cause sometimes severe macro-blocking. The extent of this depends on the extent of the movement, but the end result is that detail is washed away even further. The background at times became quite noisy from this effect, something I call "digital noise", and it was particularly bad during Chapter 13 (Beauty And The Beast). Since the disc only runs for slightly over an hour, there should be plenty of room for a much better compression effort than we have here, and I hope future releases improve on this.

Audio

    There are two audio tracks on this disc, one being the obligatory Linear PCM audio track running at full tilt (or 1536 Kilobits per second), and a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, also running at the current high-end rate on DVD (being 448 Kilobits per second).

    I am always intrigued when a disc is authored in this way, because it lets me do direct A/B comparisons between the severely data-reduced Dolby Digital codec, and the non-compressed Linear PCM stream. I am always amazed at what Dolby Digital can do with its meagre bit-budget, though on this disc the sound of the Dolby Digital mix is quite different from the LPCM mix.

    Essentially, this is really a studio soundtrack, with only one track credited as being live (I Can't Help Falling In Love). So, Celine goes through the motions, and basically mimes the words, which is not too much of a problem for me, but might upset people who thought they were actually getting a concert performance, which is sort of intimated by the word "concert" on the cover. Anyhow, to give that "live" feel, the engineers have done the standard "lets crank up the reverb, and pull out some middle frequencies". This has the effect of thinning out the sound, which is particularly evident on the drums, which lose punch, and also drowns out the vocals in a sea of ambient echoes. But, given the type of voice Celine has, that too is okay, and I quite like her voice drowned in reverb.

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is really reverb-heavy, and the rears are only very slightly lower in volume than the mains. The centre channel is very quiet, and in fact I disabled the mains and surrounds and was surprised to hear almost nothing from the centre speaker. In reality, then, it is effectively a 4.1 mix. The LPCM track has much less reverb, and as a consequence, does not have quite as much of an open sound. Swapping between the two (sometimes madly, and at great annoyance to my wife) proves that whilst the 5.1 mix initially sounds "better", after a while it becomes somewhat fatiguing and thin. The LPCM track sounds tighter, with better bass and, because of the lower reverb, has better front-stage imaging, with instruments being positional  in the stereo field. It is therefore a toss up between a more "live" sound provided by the 5.1 mix, or a slightly more tighter though presence-collapsed 2.0 LPCM mix. I suppose it will depend on your mood at the time, and I couldn't decide which one I preferred. For the record, my wife preferred the 5.1 mix.

Extras

Menu

    The menu is plain, functional and somewhat difficult to navigate, simply because the selected item is a light pink instead of the otherwise white, which makes it hard to tell what is selected!

Lyrics

    You have the option of either English or French lyrics.

Discography

R4 vs R1

    Both versions are identical, save for the R1's NTSC transfer. Since, however, NTSC is clearly the source format, the R1 may look slightly better - but that is a guess.

Summary

    Whilst the presentation is distinctly average, I think Celine Dion fans would quite like this disc nonetheless.

    The video is VHS grade, and is quite poor really.

    The audio fares rather better than the video, and certainly has a nice open, live feeling (at least the 5.1 mix).

    The lyrics are a welcome addition.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall
© Paul Cordingley
20th March, 2000. 
Review Equipment
   
DVD Panasonic A350A S-Video output
Display Pioneer SD-T43W1 125cm Widescreen 16x9
Audio Decoder Internal Dolby Digital 5.1 (DVD Player)
Amplification Sony STRDE-525 5x100 watts Dolby Pro-Logic / 5.1 Ready Receiver; 4 x Optimus 10-band Graphic EQ
Speakers Centre: Sony SS-CN35 100 watt; Main & Surrounds: Pioneer CS-R390-K 150-watt floorstanders; Subwoofer: Optimus 100-watt passive