BUY

General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1999	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	59:54 minutes	Other Extras	Discography
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Alan Lewens
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Walter Becker Donald Fagen Greg Katz Dean Parks Ian Dury Andy Gill Rick Marotta Roger Nichols Michael McDonald Larry Carlton Denny Dias Wayne Shorter
Case	Amaray
RRP	$39.95	Music	Steely Dan

    This documentary looks back, in much the same way as the other programmes in the series, at the creation of this album. The predominant speakers are Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who were the core of Steely Dan. As explained in this program, the remainder of the band comprised session musicians, as the duo had trouble finding other musicians who were consistently able to play at the same level as them. The great majority of this documentary focusses on the reminiscences of Walter and Donald, with the usual dissection of tracks at the mixing deck. A small amount of archival footage is presented, but this is limited in quantity as much of it is in pretty poor shape.

    Make sure you watch through the end credits, as there is a little tid-bit right at the end which is quite amusing.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The contemporary sections of the transfer were superbly sharp and clear. The archival footage consisted of two types of source material; old black-and-white 8mm film and old colour video footage. Both of these types of archival material were very ordinary in quality, and very poorly defined. Sensibly, we are only treated to small tid-bits of this material at a time before returning to the better quality of the contemporary video material. Note that this is the nature of this type of footage, and the DVD transfer faithfully reproduces the limitations of the source material in these areas.

    Shadow detail was generally good, other than the archival material.

    All manner of noise artefacts marred the archival footage, with low level noise being quite prominent within the video source, as well as the not-often seen herring-bone distortion (moving lines spreading through the image like ripples in a pond). The contemporary footage was exemplary in this area.

    The colours were clear and natural. The archival video footage was an exception, with poorly defined and bleeding colour.

    MPEG artefacts were not visible at any stage during this program.

    Aliasing crept in once during this presentation, with a long shot of skyscrapers shimmering away, but this was pretty minor.

    Film artefacts were restricted to occurring within the few brief segments of archival 8mm film footage. When they did occur, they were quite prominent.

Audio

    The dialogue was mostly clear and easy to understand, though there were times during the mixing desk sessions where it did become a little hard to hear Walter and Donald's comments.

    Audio sync was not a problem at all with this transfer.

    The music sounded a little muffled and recessed at times, particularly towards the end of this DVD, and I do wonder whether at least a higher bitrate would have helped in this regard. Early on, the music sounds fantastic, particularly considering the recording that it has been taken from is over 20 years old.

    The surround channels were not used by this soundtrack

    The .1 channel was not discretely encoded, but it was used more-or-less continuously during the music by my Dolby Digital processor and was nicely supportive of the music.

Menu

    Oddly, this menu appears to be 16x9 enhanced.

    The highlighted selection was somewhat hard to make out because of the choice of blue used for it - I suspect that viewing this DVD via either component or RGB video connections would help to improve this considerably.

Discography

    The video quality is generally good, with the contemporary video being of superb quality and archival footage reflecting the age of the material.

    The audio quality is average.

    The extras are extremely limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
10th February 2000