Earth Scapes (1994) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Trailer-Earthdance
Rating
Year Of Production	1994
Running Time	37:37
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	David Fortney
Studio Distributor	Simitar DVD	Starring	None Given
Case	Jewel
RPI	$24.95	Music	Various

    Since there is no "plot" as such in this feature, I will simply list the following details for each chapter. There is no thematic connection across chapters.
 

Chapter Title	Location	Music	Description
1. Opening Titles	N/A	N/A	N/A
2. Monument Valley	Monument Valley, Arizona Canyonland National Park, Utah	Vangelis, "The Bounty" Closing Credits	Clouds, canyons, desert features
3. Canadian Rockies	Canadian Rockies, Alberta, Canada	Patrick O'Hearn, Delicate	Fairly stunning mountain and lake scenery
4. Waterborne	Various waterways Niagara Falls Pacific Coast	Suzanne Ciani, Anthem	Forests, waterfalls, wildlife
5. Wonderland	Lake Tahoe, Central Valley Sierra Nevada Mountains, California	Mychael Danna, Dierdre of the Sorrows	More mountain and lake scenery
6. Colorscapes	Flowers of the Western States	Richard Burmer, Across the View	Various close-ups of flowers and flower fields
7. Desert Winter	Death Valley, California Nevada High Deserts	Richard Burmer, A Story from the Rain	Desert scenes and closing credits

    This kind of disc only works well on DVD if the audio and video transfer are of reference quality, because then you can use the DVD as a demo disc to show off your home theatre to admiring fans and groupies. Unfortunately, as we will find out, the transfer quality is shockingly poor, barely better than a VHS tape. My suggestion is to avoid buying or renting this disc unless you are interested in the scenery and music and don't care about the quality of the presentation.

Video

    The film itself appears to be somewhat grainy with slightly desaturated colours. It has some dirt and scratches but no major marks. I would rate the sharpness, detail and black levels as below average.

    The video transfer appears to have a number of glitches. I originally started noting the approximate timer locations of these but I gave up after encountering the fifth. Suffice it to say that you will encounter a video glitch in the transfer ever 5 minutes or so. The transfer itself seems almost designed to show off what video/MPEG artefacts are - I can detect examples of pixelization, colour smearing, posterization, shimmering (17:45), and moiré (24:39). The only MPEG artefact I did not detect was ringing (Gibb effect).

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    As the audio track is in 2 channels, the surround channels and sub-woofer are not activated during the presentation.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The menus consist mainly of scene selections. The top level menu allows you to between select "Continuous Play" and "Random Scene Access", but on my DVD player the Continuous Play option does not seem to do what it suggests - at the end of the film, the DVD player reverts back to the main menu.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall