It's really odd to me...many public television stations produce their own documentary shows which they sell on DVDs, but only certain ones ever are released as "official" PBS DVDs.
In this case I was looking for a documentary film I could send to some of my friends to give a brief overview of what the state of Idaho looks like. Two DVDs looked about right, so I purchased review copies.
The first is "Idaho: An Aerial Tapestry". The second is "Idaho Edens". Both are only available directly from Idaho Public Television's store at
http://www.idptvsecure.org/Merchant2...vc?Screen=SFNT
You will notice that almost no technical specifications are shown at the website. All that is stated is that these are 60 minute documentaries, and that "All DVD's are DVD-R. DVD-R is a non-rewriteable format and it is compatible with about 93% of all DVD Players and most DVD-ROMs." Even the cover artwork is missing from the website.
Once I received my discs, both in standard keepcases, I was still mystified in that no technical specs were present here either. No indication of whether they were widescreen, 16:9 enhanced, or audio options. I had to determine this by watching the films.
It was difficult to determine the aspect ratios and widescreen encoding on the discs. AAT has no human close-ups but does show a map of the northwestern US. By comparing the height vs. the width of various states on the video vs. a paper atlas, I was able to feel comfortable that AAT is widescreen. Few maps appear on Edens but there are several “talking head” segments and again it appears Eden is widescreen.
I set my DVD drive to 16:9 (which it always is) but the monitor to 4:3. This makes 16:9 encoded discs show up full-height whereas non-16:9 discs show up as windowboxed. The AAT DVD appears to be recorded in 16:9 enhanced video, whereas Eden appears to be letterbox non-16:9. Both have an aspect ratio of roughly 1.85:1 (exactly 16:9). Both have audio encoded as DD 1.0.
You can look at the surface of a DVD-R and see how much of the disc has been consumed with video. In both AAT and Edens, only a little less than half the disc’s surface has been used…they could have cut the compression by half and used up the whole disc at no extra cost. Both discs have a lot of what I believe is referred to as “mosquito noise” which would have been attenuated by careful mastering – and using the whole DVD-R’s surface. I would guess that the mastering was done by the lazy method of “set the compression once and go to lunch”.
Idaho PTV shows these programs on occasion on their HDTV channel, so I’ll have to watch and see how much improvement could be made. AAT was copyright 1999 and Edens in 2001, and since both are widescreen I’d think they were shot with a HD video camera.
Now as to program content…..
Idaho: An Aerial Tapestry is 100% footage shot by cameras mounted in helicopters. It covers the sights of the state starting in the SE corner, moving on to the SW corner, the center of the state, and finally the northern panhandle. The pilots appear to be quite brave as they skim the water going up numerous river canyons. The background score is dramatic but no overdone. The narrator gets a little too “poetic” on occasion but is acceptable. There are subtitles for many of the sights which helps cut down on the amount of narration. The only really cheesy part is the ending, where some ditzy folksinger thinks she’s being profound.
Idaho Edens mixes some aerial shots (mostly rehash of footage from AAT) with some “artistic” close-ups and some talking-head interview segments. Neither of these last two enhanced the films for me. The “artistic” close-ups of a flower, a cute squirrel, dew dripping from a fern leaf, etc. get cloying after a while….the talking heads gush on about how great the scenery is.
So I would recommend people wanting a quick overview of Idaho to go with the AAT disc. The program content is better and it’s 16:9 enhanced.
. I may have to mail some off myself....maybe as far away as Amsterdam if you get my drift.
