BUY

General		Extras
Category	Music	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1997	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	72:52 minutes (not 75 minutes as stated on packaging)	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Selection, then Movie
Region	0	Director	David Heffernan
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision Australia	Starring	Fleetwood Mac
Case	Amaray
RRP	$39.95	Music	Fleetwood Mac

    This DVD release from the Classic Albums series, which was made for television, brings together recently recorded interviews with the band members and some of the recording personnel from the album, interspersed with archival video footage of the band in concert. In addition there are a number extracts from newly recorded, acoustic versions of some of the classic tracks from what is truly a classic album. In particular, there are excerpts from the master tape recording of the beautiful Silver Springs, a song that never made it onto the original album, being dropped quite late owing to length considerations.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

    The more recent, interview portions of the transfer come up pretty well indeed, reasonably sharp and quite well detailed, although perhaps the choice of location for the Lindsey Buckingham interview could have been better chosen. Whilst clearly not as crisp as we would expect from a feature film, this is not humbled too much by the comparison. Unfortunately, the archival concert footage is not as good, lacking somewhat in definition and contrast. However, I have seen far worse than this, and only the most fastidious are likely to find too much to fault here.

    The colours come up quite rich in tone, although not oversaturated, in general. This is not an especially vivid transfer, but the results are quite reasonably natural and very consistent in the rendering. Naturally, the archival concert footage suffers somewhat in both the lack of contrast (the footage in general being quite dark) and lack of colour tone (at times the colour is quite anaemic). The detail in the concert footage is at times very poor.

    There did not appear to be any MPEG artefacts in the transfer, nor were film-to-video artefacts a problem: it should be noted however that the archival concert footage did have some inherent problems, which cannot be blamed upon the DVD transfer. There did not appear to be any film artefacts present in the transfer, reflecting perhaps the television source of the video.

    It should be noted too that there are no chapters on the DVD, which is quite unusual and also mildly annoying, especially when you try to locate your favourite songs off the album.

Audio

    There are five audio tracks on the DVD, all MPEG 2.0 soundtracks: German, English, French, Italian and Spanish. I listened to the English soundtrack. It should be noted that the languages are not flagged to your player, as we are used to with most DVD releases, but rather are flagged to the player as 1-5; for instance, the German soundtrack is flagged to the player as 1 rather than as German.

    The music and vocals came up very clear and understandable in the soundtrack.

    Audio sync did not appear to be a problem with the soundtrack.

    The MPEG 2.0 soundtrack does not make any use of the surround or bass channels. Whilst this would ordinarily be a concern, and I would have much preferred a 5.1 soundtrack, the resultant sound suits the style of production quite well. The only real concern that I have is that the interviews with Stevie Nicks done outdoors have a slightly unnatural balance to them, which is quite probably the result of some slightly poor ADR work. The overall soundscape is quite natural and realistic enough.

    A good, if not especially noteworthy video transfer.

    A good audio transfer.

    No extras at all to worry about, which some may see as a concern.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris
9th November 1999