Howard Hewett-The Journey Live (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Interviews-Cast-Howard Hewett Featurette-Producers Music Video-"Circle Of Life" Audio-Only Track-"Without You" and "The Journey" Gallery-Photo-Behind The Scenes, Early Days Biographies-Cast
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	55:50 (Case: 60)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Ron Yager
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Howard Hewett
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Howard Hewett

    Howard Hewett used to be the lead singer of Shalamar, but then successfully launched a solo R&B career singing songs with a strong Gospel bias.

    The Journey is an all Gospel album first released in 2001. The Journey Live ... From The Heart seems to be a follow-on album (released on both CD and DVD) containing a mixture of live performances and "live to track" versions of songs originally featured on The Journey, plus some new songs.

    In addition, we get various interview snippets with Howard Hewett and executive producer Raina Bundy.

    The live performances are all recorded at the Storyville club, New Orleans. The songs that are recorded "live to track" (i.e. Howard singing live against a pre-recorded backing track) are a new song called Straight To The Heart and Grace & Mercy. In addition, Circle of Life appears to be a music video.

Video

    This is a full frame PAL transfer, presumably based on an interlaced video source.

    The overall transfer is not too bad, featuring rich, fully saturated colours, and fairly good contrast/black levels.

    The overall look is slightly on the soft side, but otherwise I did not find any faults in the transfer.

    There are no subtitle tracks on this single sided single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are several audio tracks on this disc: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s), English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s), and English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s).

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is recorded with dialogue normalization set to +4dB, so it sounds louder than the other two tracks. However, even when I equalised the volume levels, the track seems to have more pronounced bass than the dts 5.1 track.

    The dts 5.1 track sounds slightly less edgier than the Dolby Digital 5.1 track, but otherwise there was little difference between the tracks. I am not sure which one I prefer, perhaps the dts 5.1 track because it sounds more "relaxed."

    The surround channels seem to be mostly used for ambience. Vocals are mixed to all front channels. The subwoofer is lightly used to support the low frequencies in the music.

    I did not notice any issues with audio synchronization and the dialogue comes through reasonably clearly.

    The Dolby Digital 2.0 track is recorded at a very low level and sounds tinny and insubstantial compared to the other two tracks.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are a number of extras, all presented in full frame.

Menu

    The menus are static and full frame.

Interviews-Cast- Howard Hewett (16:43)

    This is an interview of Howard Hewett by Cathleen Triggs, presented in full frame and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) in a mixture of black and white and colour. There are some archival photos, and the interview includes a discussion of his career, his reasons for recording a gospel/inspirational album, the events of 11 September 2003, and the contents of the DVD. It also includes an excerpt from him performing Say Amen a capella and on stage.

Featurette- Producers (3:27)

    This features Howard Hewett talking about one of the producers of the DVD on the left side of the frame, plus black and white behind the scenes footage of the studio sessions on the right side of the frame. The featurette is presented in approximately 2.10:1 letterboxed and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s).

Music Video- "Circle Of Life" (4:52)

    This is presented in full frame and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s). This seems identical to Chapter 7 of the main feature, so I'm not sure why it is duplicated here.

Audio-Only Track- "Without You" and "The Journey" (9:27)

    This contains audio only versions of two songs from the Journey album not covered in the main feature, presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s). I would have preferred Linear PCM 2.0 being used here.

Gallery-Photo- Behind The Scenes

    This is a collection of 20 photos of Howard plus various production/crew members for the DVD.

Gallery-Photo- Early Days

    This is a set of four stills showing various photos of Howard Hewett.

Biographies-Cast

    This is a set of six stills providing a short biography of Howard Hewett plus some background on the songs in the Journey album.

    I suspect the R1 and R4 versions are identical, although I could not find any reference to a dts 5.1 audio track in the R1 release on any web site. If the dts 5.1 track is not present on R1, then the clear winner is R4, otherwise it's a tie.

    The Journey Live ... from the Heart features Howard Hewett singing songs from his Journey album live in front of an audience and also in the studio.

    The video transfer quality is acceptable.

    The audio transfer quality is good.

    There are a number of extras included.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall