Richard Clapton & Friends-Up and Down the Glory Road (2001) |
BUY IT |
General | Extras | ||
Category | Music |
Main Menu Audio Interviews-Cast-Richard Clapton (8) Biographies-Cast-Richard Clapton Gallery-Photo Music Video-11 |
|
Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 2001 | ||
Running Time | 119:37 (Case: 170) | ||
RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (83:43) | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Menu | ||
Region Coding | 1,2,3,4,5,6 | Directed By | None Given |
Studio
Distributor |
Warner Vision |
Starring |
Richard Clapton Garry Beers Jon Farriss Diesel |
Case | Soft Brackley-Transp | ||
RPI | $39.95 | Music | None Given |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Full Frame |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) |
|
Widescreen Aspect Ratio | None | ||
16x9 Enhancement | No | ||
Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 1.33:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles | None | Smoking | No |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | No |
If you have listened to the radio sometime in the last thirty years, chances are that you will have heard some of Richard Clapton's music. Songs such as Down In The Lucky Country and Girls On The Avenue have become part of the musical history of Australia.
If you are reading this, chances are that you are already a fan and are interested in whether or not to buy this disc.
The main content of this disc is a concert recorded at the City Live Fox studios on 13th August 2001. It features Richard Clapton and special guests Garry Beers, Jon Farriss and Diesel. This concert runs for just under two hours and contains some fantastic music. I particularly enjoyed some of the guitar work. During the concert footage they have inserted a couple of very quick interviews, which either talk about the song that is about to be sung or about Richard Clapton himself.
The video is not the best. Material recorded during live shows is always a challenge, and the transfer is not the best either, but the real problem for me was the audio. While the recording is very good, capturing the sound of the instruments very well, the mixing of some of the songs can only be described as bizarre. For the first part of the concert we have a reasonably standard 5.1 mix with the instruments and vocals spread across the front with some assistance from the surrounds. When a second guitar is added on stage, the lead guitar is positioned in the left front speaker and the rhythm guitar is placed in the left rear surround.
We almost have a 4.1 mix. Not a standard one with three front channels and mono surrounds, but three fronts and one surround. This mix had me up out of my seat and walking around the room to check what was going on. There was a small amount of activity from the right surround (some ambience and the keyboard), but it was completely overpowered by the guitar in the left rear, and this was for both the Dolby Digital and the DTS tracks! Maybe this was an experiment in the use of 5.1 for music but I found the disparity between the visuals of the band members in front of me on-stage and the audio image where I was positioned somewhere in the middle of the band quite disconcerting.
1. Down In The Lucky Country 2. Capricorn Dancer 3. Suit Yourself 4. Get Back To The Shelter 5. Real Love 6. Dark Spaces 7. Oceans Of The Heart 8. Spellbound 9. Calling For You 10. Distant Thunder | 11. Deep Water 12. The UnderGround 13. Glory Road 14. Ace Of Hearts 15. Flow In Motion 16. I Am An Island 17. Best Years Of Our Lives 18. Blue Bay Blues 19. Girls On The Avenue 20. Goodbye Tiger |
I am afraid that there are some problems with the video on this disc. One problem in particular was a completely new one that I had never seen before. At a couple of points during the transfer where they start with a long shot of the whole band and then dolly in, the video completely loses definition for a couple of frames and becomes very blurred. During the dolly at 2:54, this loss of resolution occurs about four times and is quite distracting. Something similar occurs at 5:24 during a pan across the backing singers. In this case it looks like two frames are on the screen at one time giving a blurred and jagged appearance to the image.
We are presented with a 1.33:1 transfer that is not 16x9 enhanced.
Sharpness is not too bad for most of the material, about as good as you get from video-sourced material captured under stage lighting conditions, although the long shots are quite blurred. Shadow detail is also not too bad considering the lighting conditions. There was surprisingly little low level noise.
Colours are always hard to judge when there is coloured lighting that is constantly strobing and changing. Saturation is good and the colours have little noise in them. With front and back spots you can get the appearance of colour bleed but this is not a problem with the transfer.
There are quite a few MPEG artefacts visible. With the video source, the constantly changing lighting and the cameras constantly on the move, this would be a challenge to any MPEG encoder. This has resulted in blocking and loss of resolution both in the background and the foreground. Both pixelization and posterization can be seen in Clapton's face at 10:15. Aliasing is another problem with this transfer. It is particularly noticeable on the necks of the guitars and on Clapton's arm. An example can be seen at 8:16.
There are no subtitles on this disc.
The layer change has been placed at 83:43 in between two songs. It is noticeable but does not intrude upon the music.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
I listened to the DTS track in its entirety and sampled the Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 tracks as a comparison for several songs. I noticed the usual improved bass definition and impact in the DTS track, but other than that the two 5.1 tracks are basically identical. The 2.0 track had less impact overall but not to a really great extent.
The dialogue quality was pretty good. As many of the songs are ballads, the words are important and I could understand what was being sung pretty much the entire time. I did not notice any problems with the audio sync.
The music is of course Richard Clapton's, written and sung by the man himself. While I don't personally remember more than a few of his songs making the big time in mainstream Australia, he does have a loyal following.
The surrounds have been mentioned before. I will say in fairness that there are no technical problems with the use of the surrounds and it may be that I just personally did not like this arrangement. On the songs where they used a more traditional mix it worked very well, giving good ambience and a real feel of being there.
The subwoofer received both redirected bass and a fair input from the LFE channel as well, though the content again had me a little baffled. The bass guitar is clearly audible through the subwoofer, though this may depend a little on your crossover settings, but the bass drum was barely audible. I do not have any of Clapton's material at home to do a comparison and my memories of hearing him on the radio are somewhat blurred by time, so it may well be that his music does not normally have a strong bass drum beat.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
The menus are simple static pages with a Dolby Digital 2.0 sound clip that lasts for 3:20.
With an average time of about 40 seconds these are not long interviews, though they do give an insight into the source of the inspiration for each of the songs listed. These are presented at 1.33:1 and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. They can be selected individually or all together.
This is twelve pages of text giving a short history of the career of Richard Clapton and his music. These are navigated with the chapter button.
A series of 23 pictures of Richard Clapton taken over the last 30 years, some candid and some promotional. From the first menu entry in the section you are instructed to use the chapter forward button to move between the pictures or once started, each picture will stay on-screen for 5 seconds and then move to the next. The menu button will return you to the extras menu. The pictures are presented at 1.85:1 and are not 16x9 enhanced.
In one way, this was my favourite part of the disc. I always find it fascinating seeing a series of video clips that span a particular period of time. The evolution of the video clip from the early days of just footage of the band, through to the theme clips where there is a mini story told, is always something I enjoy watching.
Included on the disc are:
These clips are accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. Each clip can be accessed individually or they can all be played. Due to the age of some of this material, the video and audio is somewhat variable, but there are no major problems and some are actually very good. They are all presented at 1.33:1.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
There does not appear to be a Region 1 version of this disc. This disc is coded for all regions though I am unsure of the reception that would greet a PAL disc in the USA.
Whether you are a fan or not, Richard Clapton is certainly an important part of the history of Australian music. I think fans deserved a little better in the video transfer and the audio mix may well be a problem for some if not all.
Even with two layers to play with, there are compression problems on this disc.
The audio is going to put some people off.
The extras are an excellent inclusion. We get the modern concert and then a trip down memory lane with the video clips.
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Skyworth 1050p progressive scan, using RGB output |
Display | Sony 1252Q CRT Projector, 254cm custom built 1.0 gain screen. Calibrated with AVIA Guide To Home Theatre. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with AVIA Guide To Home Theatre. |
Amplification | Sony STR-DB1070 |
Speakers | B&W DM305 (mains); CC3 (centre); S100 (surrounds); custom Adire Audio Tempest with Redgum plate amp (subwoofer) |