Flack, Roberta-In Concert (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	56:57
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Waymer Johnson
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Roberta Flack
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$39.95	Music	Roberta Flack

    This disc is simply a one-hour TV program committed to DVD. An hour is not a long time, so we only get nine songs, but they are well-chosen. The TV program is one of a series produced by the Jazz Channel for US cable TV. This program was made in 2000 in front of a small audience. The audience were sitting at small tables - I'm not sure if this was in a jazz club, or just simulating one. Either way, I could have done without the candles flickering on every table - they were distracting.

    Roberta Flack has been performing for a long time - over three decades. She still has a voice, but she doesn't sing the way she used to. Maybe she cannot hold the notes she used to? Or maybe that's just the style she prefers today? I don't know. But if you are expecting to hear her perform Killing Me Softly in the way she did on the single, you'll be disappointed (I was).

    This performance includes some interesting snippets of her talking to the audience, so it's not just plain old singing.

    One thing I hate about pop concerts on DVD is the insistence of the director on changing shot every second or two, as though that is the only way the director can prove his/her existence. I'm pleased to say that this disc is untroubled by this defect (maybe jazz directors are more secure?).

    The credits do not bother to identify the musicians performing with Roberta Flack (every single member of the crew, but not the musicians!). Without subtitles, it is not easy to tell what Roberta Flack is saying when she occasionally introduces a band member (she doesn't introduce all of them, anyway).

    This is a pleasant-enough effort, but it doesn't feel like a whole lot for the money.

Video

    This is a TV program, so it is unsurprising that it is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. The video quality is higher than video tape. It does not look like it was taken from a VHS master.

    MPEG encoding works by determining what part of the image is foreground, and giving that priority - foreground image is encoded with less compression than background. This works well, because foreground images are what we are normally looking at. The problem comes when there is no foreground image - the whole frame is encoded as background, meaning that it looks a bit grainy. This means that close-ups look good, but long shots (such as those showing the entire band) look fuzzy. This disc shows this effect very clearly - nice sharp close-ups, but soft long shots. Concerts are usually lit for the benefit of the audience, rather than the cameras. Consequently, I never expect much shadow detail in concert footage - this disc is no exception. There's what looks like serious low level noise in the shots from one camera, but it could easily be attributable to the background of that image. The audience shots look a bit grainy, but they are shot in lower light, so that's perfectly reasonable.

    Colour is very hard to judge. Every performer is dressed in black. The stage is lit almost exclusively in blue light. The audience is lit in soft red (there are numerous audience shots). There's nothing in sight that shows its natural colours. I'd guess that we are getting a fairly accurate impression of what the audience saw, but there's no way to be sure of that.

    There is very little aliasing - quite impressive. There's a little bit of background shimmer. There are no film artefacts and no macro-blocking, making this quite a clean transfer.

    There are no subtitles, which annoyed me. I'd have liked subtitles for the speaking parts, even if they didn't bother for the songs, although subtitling the songs, too, would have been even better.

    The disc is single-sided and single-layered, which means no layer change. There's a small fib on the cover - it claims that the disc is DVD9 - it is not, it's a DVD5. No problem for a single hour of material, with no extras.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are three soundtracks on this DVD, all in English. There's a Dolby Digital 5.1 track, a Dolby Digital 2.0 track (not surround encoded), and a dts track. I listened to the dts soundtrack all the way through, the Dolby Digital 5.1 almost all the way through, and sampled the Dolby Digital 2.0 extensively. The dts soundtrack is a bit unusual - one of my players reports it as 5.1, while the other accuses it of being 5.0; given that my subwoofer switched itself off, I'm inclined to believe the 5.0 description.

    The lyrics are quite easy to understand, with perfect audio sync. Almost all of the speech is comprehensible, but there are a few words I couldn't quite make out (I haven't forgiven the lack of subtitles...).

    The comparison between the three soundtracks was interesting. The subwoofer was not used by the 2.0 soundtrack, nor by the dts track, but it is used well by the Dolby Digital 5.1 track. The surrounds are used for nothing much but applause, so they aren't missed in the 2.0 mix. The real difference between the three soundtracks is in the front soundstage. The 2.0 soundtrack is missing both bottom end and extended high frequency response. It lacks precision in placement of the sounds, too - don't listen to it. The dts sounds rather good - I listened to it first, expecting it to be the preferable choice. Heck, it is a full-rate 1.5 megabit / second dts track - it should be the best of the three. But then I switched to the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack (running at 448 kilobit / second) - it has stronger, more defined bass, and it is the equal of the dts track in the high frequencies. I have a horrible feeling that the difference is the .1 component - perhaps the dts soundtrack was also meant to be 5.1, and they forgot to master the LFE component? That would explain the difference, I guess.

    In summary? I recommend the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack over the dts.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is static and silent. It offers access by song, and choice of soundtrack.

    This concert is being released in Region 1 soon, and the features promised sound identical. No reason to prefer one over the other.

    Roberta Flack-In Concert is a reasonable concert program, albeit a little short.

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is excellent.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall