Ball Above All (2001) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Sports	Main Menu Audio & Animation Scene Selection Anim & Audio Trailer-On The Come Up
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	40:30
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Stomp Visual	Starring	None Given
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	?	Music	Various

    Ball Above All is a collection of short basketball clips showing some impressive slam dunks mixed between a number of advertisements and unrelated segments.

    This disc features numerous short clips from high school and college basketball games and footage from street courts from around the United States. These clips are usually very short showing the player taking the last few steps towards the hoop and then making the shot. In between this collection of basketball footage are a number of unrelated segments showing footage from a motor show, low-riders, player's tattoos and numerous advertisements for HoopsTV.com and Powerade.

    I personally can find no reason to recommend this disc and feel that any viewer will be let down by its poor quality transfer and minimal content.

Video

    The NTSC transfer presented on this disc is plagued by continual artefacts and is one of the poorest I have ever seen with much of the footage looking like a low quality VCD. Continuing the poor authoring for the disc, no timing information is displayed during the transfer and consequently all times noted below are approximations.

    The transfer is presented at a full frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

    The transfer is very soft throughout but some short segments display slightly improved sharpness levels. Some low-level noise may be seen during the transfer but it is overshadowed by other artefacts and is therefore not annoying. The majority of the transfer is very brightly lit, but during the small number of dark scenes poor levels of shadow detail are displayed. During the opening introductions at 0:20, 2:05 and 3:32, the contrast displayed is excessive resulting in no detail being visible in the white portions of the image.

    During the transfer, the colour displayed varies considerably but is always at least slightly muted and never vibrant.

    The transfer displays significant MPEG artefacts during nearly every scene and these are very distracting. Obvious MPEG artefacts may be seen at 1:16, 2:22, 2:48, 3:32 and 4:12 but they may be seen within a few seconds of any point in the transfer. Numerous aliasing artefacts are present in the transfer. Some examples of these artefacts may be seen at 9:22, 9:36, 10:01, 10:32 and 14:55 and they are moderately disturbing. During some archival footage at 25:04 and 27:47, some small film artefacts may be seen.

    Some obvious dot-crawl may be seen during the opening logo sequence at 0:05 but this only lasts for a short period and is only minimally annoying.

    Numerous analogue tape errors may be seen throughout the transfer. Some examples of these artefacts may be seen at 17:18, 23:41, 28:17, 30:36, 32:43 and 33:30. Due to their frequency, these artefacts are moderately distracting.

    No subtitles are included on this disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The dialogue is often muffled during the transfer but remains relatively easy to understand at all times. No dropouts or problems with audio sync were detected during the transfer.

    A hip-hop soundtrack from various artists supports the feature and this suits the material presented.

    The surround and LFE channels were not utilized during the transfer.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

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

Trailer: On The Come Up at the Source Awards (0:30)

    This trailer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and it is not 16x9 enhanced.

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    This disc is identical to the version previously released in Region 1.

    Due to the short running time, numerous advertisements and poor video quality I feel that few viewers will enjoy Ball Above All.

    The video transfer is very disappointing and displays constant artefacts that are very distracting.

    The basic soundtrack has muffled audio at numerous points throughout but is functional for the material presented.

    The single trailer is of the same quality as the main feature and is not of any real use for viewers.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall