Celine Dion-All the Way... A Decade of Song & Video (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Introduction Biographies-Cast Discography Gallery-Photo Music Video-It's All Coming Back To Me Now Scene Selection Anim & Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	80:58 (Case: 90)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Sony Music	Starring	Celine Dion
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$34.95	Music	Celine Dion

    Celine Dion - All The Way ... A Decade of Song and Video is a curious mix of old and new. The disc contains a selection of music videos and excerpts from concert performances that fit into a "Side A vs. Side B" pattern (owners of LP vinyl records will know what I'm talking about here).

    "Side A", or the first half of the programme, consists of a "greatest hits" compilation of some of Celine's most well known and popular songs, including The Power of Love, Beauty and the Beast, Because You Loved Me, It's All Coming Back To Me Now, and the love theme from "Titanic." Three of the songs here are taken from the "Falling Into You" concert held in Memphis, Tennesse. Judging from the fact she wears three different outfits for the three songs and they are all from the same concert, she must have been flitting in and out of the dressing room quite a few times that night!

    "Side B", or the second half of the programme, seems to be a collection of brand new songs and music videos made specially for this release. I have a suspicion that Celine must have originally planned to record a full length album, but after getting about half way there decided to take time off to give birth to and raise her new child. The studio may have decided to release the new songs anyway and fill the gap with oldies but goodies. If that is the case, the studio could have promoted the new songs more as most of them are really nice: the marketing blurb of "a stunning collection of Celine Dion's greatest videos and live concert performances" is a wee bit deceptive and may lead fans to conclude that this is nothing more than a collection of past hits.

    Two of the songs on Side "B" are recorded "live" (taken from a 1999 CBS TV special) and are covers of oldies but goodies: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and a "duet" with Frank Sinatra (well - Celine singing live accompanying a recording of Blue Eyes) called All The Way. There is also a duet with soul/R&B artist R. Kelly entitled I'm Your Angel.

    For those of you who don't know Celine Dion, she is one of the top recording artists of recent years, having won five Grammy awards and having sold more than 100 million albums worldwide. Born in Charlemagne (a small town 30 miles east of Montreal, Quebec, Canada), Celine is the youngest of 14 children of a highly musical family. She started by singing in French, but rapidly gained recognition and popularity when she started singing in English, particularly after she won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin Ireland and both a Grammy and an Oscar for her performance of the title track for the soundtrack to the animated Disney hit movie 'Beauty and the Beast.' Since then, she has released several successful English and French albums, although lately she has taken a bit of a break from her career to concentrate on her new-found role as wife and mother of a beautiful child.

    Note that this disc has been withdrawn from sale since its release due to a mastering fault (see below for more detail).

Video

    Most of the music videos and songs are presented Full Frame, except for the following (which are letterboxed - obviously with no 16x9 enhancement):

• It's All Coming Back To Me Now (1.85:1)
• My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme from The Titanic) (2.00:1)

    Given that this is a collection of music videos, some of which stretch back nearly ten years, I did not expect high quality for at least the early ones, and I did not get it. However, the quality of the transfers for even the new songs is fairly mediocre.

    I suspect that the video source for the transfer is NTSC analogue composite video which has then been upconverted to PAL. The transfer seems overly soft and lacking in vertical resolution. Colours look blended in and exaggerated and shadow detail is mediocre.

    In addition, there are persistent evidence of video artefacts, such as aliasing, shimmering, minor pixelization and low level Gibb's effect. The first song in the set (The Power Of Love) also exhibits medium level graininess. I suspect that the video transfer has been overcompressed in order to fit over 80 minutes (including Dolby Digital 5.1 and Linear PCM audio tracks) onto a single sided single layered disc. I would have much preferred it if they had spread the content over two layers.

    Finally, there is a rather severe mastering fault where the video completely breaks up into blocks/blank areas around 17:44-17:45 (during Because You Loved Me). The accompanying PCM audio track also breaks up (into silence accompanied by several clicks) around this time though strangely the Dolby Digital track is not affected at all.

    I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there is an English subtitle track which faithfully provides the lyrics to the songs.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are two audio tracks on this disc: Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 (1536 Kb/s) and Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kb/s).

    The Linear PCM audio track has been mixed at an extremely low level (no less than 10 dB below say most CDs) and the quality suffers as a result. I directly compared the PCM audio track with the equivalent songs on my Celine Dion CD collection. Celine's voice in the audio track for the earlier music videos (The Power of Love, If You Asked Me To, etc.) sounds rather harsh and sibilant compared to her voice on CD, and the audio track seems to lack deep bass and dynamics appeared to have been compressed. In other words, the audio track seems to have been taken from the analogue video (remixed for playback on broadcast TV) rather than from the original digital recording.

    Celine's enunciation is fairly easy to pick up on the audio track and there are no audio synchronisation issues apart from during the "duet" with Frank Sinatra (All The Way) where Frank's voice does not really sync with the video.

    As mentioned before, the PCM audio track breaks up around 17:44-17:45 due to a mastering fault.

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, on the other hand, is a brand new surround sound mix from the original source master tape. The surround mix is rather aggressive in its use of rear speakers with certain instruments deliberately mixed into the rear channels instead of the rears just providing ambience information. Overall, I was very impressed with the quality of the 5.1 audio, over-the-top though it may be in its use of the surround channels. It gives a very good indication of the future of surround sound music and how enveloping or three dimensional it can get.

    The sound quality of the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track holds up quite well in comparison to the stereo version on CD but sounded just a little bit more hollow and less crisp compared to the CD recording. Overall, I would rate the CD version to be highest in quality, followed by the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, followed last by the PCM audio track. In other words, don't bother listening to the PCM audio track if you have a good Dolby Digital decoder and 5.1 speakers.

    The subwoofer is mainly used to support the music. There is not a lot of low frequency information on the disc.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The DVD producers have tried hard to include some extras on this disc, but ultimately none of them are particularly interesting.

Menu

    The menus are static and non 16x9 enhanced, but there is an animated menu introduction (with Dolby Surround audio). The scene selection menus, however, do come with animation and audio.

Biographies-Celine Dion

    This is a collection of 17 stills detailing a biography, career highlights, awards and discography for Celine Dion.

Discography

    This is a set of stills providing the titles and covers of albums and videos released by Celine Dion. I wished they had included track listings as well.

Gallery-Photo

    This is a set of 13 stills containing various images of Celine Dion.

Music Video - It's All Coming Back To Me Now (7:44)

    This is an extended version of It's All Coming Back To Me Now (7:44 instead of 6:07 minutes) mixed in stereo only. The audio track is Linear PCM 48 kHz/16 bits. The video transfer is 1.85:1 letterboxed with no 16x9 enhancement. The video has obviously been converted from NTSC to PAL, which unfortunately results in frames being combined (NTSC at 60 Hz has more frames per second than PAL at 50 Hz) - during the thunderstorm and lightning "flashes" in the video clip I could clearly see occasions where half the frame has the lightning flash and the other half doesn't.

    As far as I know, the Region 1 and Region 4 versions of this title are identically featured.

    This collection of Celine Dion music videos (containing some of her greatest hits as well as several new songs) entitled All The Way ... A Decade of Song & Video will no doubt please the many legions of Celine Dion fans. However, it is presented on a DVD with a mediocre video transfer. Fortunately, the audio track features a superb remixing of the songs into Dolby Digital 5.1 that is a good indication (particularly for those of us who don't own a DVD Audio player yet) of how good surround sound music can get. The extras are somewhat limited but welcomed nevertheless. This disc has been withdrawn from release due to a mastering fault which results in the video and PCM audio breaking up at around 17:44-17:45.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall