Valentino Rossi's MotoGP Trail of Glory (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Sports	Menu Audio Trailer-MotoGP, Magic Moments Of MotoGP, World SBK, British SBK
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	63:22 (Case: 60)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Duke Marketing MRA Entertainment	Starring	Valentino Rossi
Case	Amaray-Opaque-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	None Given

    So, it was a complete surprise to me to watch a documentary of his racing life that heavily played down his dominance in the sport. One could go away from this DVD feeling that The Doctor had a less than successful trip to the operating theatre. This DVD takes you through Rossi's racing career from a boy racing go-carts at age 10, to the 125cc, 250cc, and 500cc motorbike classes, and then finally to his first year in MotoGP. Valentino is famous for both his on and off track antics, as well as the most spectacular celebrations ever seen on a race track. Where did these go? His famous teasing of other riders, where he would race to the lead only to slow and let the chasers pass so that he could have something to chase again; GONE.

    No true Rossi fan could watch this and not be totally disappointed - there is so much to show of this rider, and so much source material available that it is heartbreaking to see what has been done to such a promising subject.

Video

    The video transfer of this DVD is atrocious. I know this is my first review and I don't particularly want to start off on the wrong foot, but I can't think of any more apt term to use. I can forgive some of the early footage as it is obviously from very poor source material, but the entire transfer is well below par and wouldn't look all that good on a 68cm TV let alone on a 76" projector screen.

    This transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, which is probably the original aspect ratio of most of the sources used for this documentary.

    The overall picture quality is pretty bad with poor sharpness, and the colour is often oversaturated.

    There are massive aliasing, colour bleeding, and macro blocking problems, along with more MPEG artefacts and pixelization issues than you can count. On the bright side I couldn't find anything in the way of positive or negative film artefacts.

    This disc is single layered.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one audio track on the disc, Dolby Digital 2.0 at a bitrate of 192Kb/s.

    The sound quality and audio level of the (uncredited) commentators' voices is OK, but the audio levels of Rossi when he is speaking are very low, and you must at times strain to hear what he is saying; most of which is in Italian.

    There were no audio sync problems with this transfer.

    Audio on this disc is average. Occasional use is made of stereo sound, but as a lot of the source material used is mono this is not a big feature of the soundtrack.

    The subwoofer was not actively used with this presentation.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The extras on this disc consist of 4 trailers.

Menu

Trailers (4 in Total)

• MotoGP (runtime 1:43)
• Magic Moments of MotoGP (runtime 1:26)
• World SBK (runtime 1:34)
• British SBK (runtime 1:40) - This last trailer is presented in widescreen.

    This is a Region 0 disc - no other versions are available as far as I am aware.

    The video quality is atrocious and should never have survived modern day editing.

    The sound is below par, but excusable due to the sources used.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall