Music DVD Poll Billy Joel - The Ultimate Collection

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Rate the DVD-V - "Billy Joel - The Ultimate Collection"

  • 5

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 4

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 2 - Poor Mix, Poor Content, Poor Packaging/Graphics

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1 - Complete waste of plastic

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    23

neil wilkes

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Joined
Feb 6, 2004
Messages
4,365
Location
London, England
Please post your thoughts, comments and observations.
Try to be as detailed as possible.
 
Last edited:
JonUrban said:
Wasn't this one mixed by "ThomC"?
Yes it is.
I love this DVD...Great surround. Lenya and Pressure are Demo's in my house. Just makes me crave for Glass Houses on SACD.
 
This is another act i never paid much attention to, but am very glad i got this DVD. The surround mix is superb, and the music is very good also. Thanks to surround {SACD & DVD} and Quad {Q8's} I now have a few Billy Joel in my collection. Overall a 9. :)
 
I thought the surround mix was only ok and the fact that it was DD only made it sound a bit thin to me.. wish it were at least DTS.
 
Some tidbits about this one....... :banana:

Overall, I am quite pleased with these mixes.
To give due credit though, some of the 5.1 mixes were not my mine,
(notably Big Shot, My Life & Honesty.These were done by Frank Fillipetti for the 52nd St SACD.)

I don't remember how all of them were dealt with, but many of these videos had live vocals, (recorded during the video shoot), that had to be inserted over the new 5.1 instrumentals. Finding and syncing up these vocals was quite a chore. I know Honesty and Baby Grand are two of them, though there are at least 3 or 4 others, I just remember which.

"James" only existed as a mono(?) live performance video tape.

We never could find the correct Los Angelenos multis for the performance you see.

The reason they used the Yankee Stadium "Piano Man" instead of the music video you may have seen, is that Billy doesn't like that video, (or so I was told after having already mixing the studio/music video version).
Also interesting is that the piano on the "Piano Man" album was only recorded in mono. This was normal practice at the time, though questionable in retrospect.

The International version of this is called the "Ultimate Collection" and has different bonus material. I don't think I woked on any of those bonus tracks.

None of these are problems with the disk, as far as I'm concerned, just little bits of trivia.

Now for my problems with this disk....


Without getting too detailed....
I had never dealt with much post mixing (lots of dialog, FX, etc.) before this.
The engineer who did this work therefore mixed it at broadcast levels, and a bit compressed to help make the dialog & FX sound better compared to the music. (Just the way he always mixed music video for broadcast!).
This also matched the levels of the stereo tracks on the master videos, which were at broadcast levels.
This had a very severe effect on the sound quality of the Dolby encode, (and would have in DTS also!).
A solution would have been mastering, but none of this was mastered.
This was a live and learn thing for both him and me, as I have done more work with this same guy many times since and have been very happy with the results. I now also oversee, question & approve everything from start to finish.

None-the-less, and as I said before, I am quite happy with the mixes.
(as a matter of fact I went and listened to the unencoded/unpostmixed raw mixes before posting here just to make sure I wasn't insane, (insaner?!?! :mad:@: )
(Maybe I'll add a little more info later as time allows)

I give it a weighted score of 7.

Favorite tracks: The Longest Time, Goodnight Saigon.
Hope you enjoy it if you get it.

PS - Am working on a rarities box set of Billy's.
Nearly done with it.
Mostly outtakes, bsides, unreleased rough song ideas.....
Will probably include two songs you can mix yourself (UMixIt Software).
It is also slated to have a new live DVD from the River Of Dreams Tour.
I really like this show, (Frankfurt Festivhall 1994), the hall sounds great and the crowd is really into it. I shouldn't say this but I think it's better than the Yankee Stadium DVD.
 
Just pulled this one out again.....what a great disc (y)
When I saw him last week I missed the surround mixes.:51banana:
Great job ThomC
 
I finally snagged me one of these DVDs! I look forward to hearing ThomC's surround mixes.
 
Some tidbits about this one....... :banana:

Overall, I am quite pleased with these mixes.

Me too. But can you tell me why . . . oh why . . . would such an otherwise complete Greatest Hits leave out "We Didn't Start the Fire"?

It seems every greatest hits album has to leave out one big hit, presumably the one the band now hates. But a #1? I don't get it.

Of course I would much rather have had the studio takes of "Goodnight Saigon" and "Piano Man", and a new 5.1 mix of "James" instead of mono. But what do I expect for $14.99, anyway? :)
 
I always appreciate peoples efforts in 5.1 especially when they are members of this forum but for my liking this mix was not that great. It seemed very tame and mild and a lot of ambience more than discreet.. I guess having listened to the sacd's of billy joel I know what his music can sound like with a very discreet mix and I prefer it that way. This isn't a bad mix by any means just not what I was hoping for.
 
I bought mine through one of the Amazon Marketplace sellers (Newbury Comics), but it appears the main Amazon.com has a couple in stock (as of this exact moment, anyway).

I never could find it locally, but just within the last 2 weeks I noticed a copy at a local Best Buy, FWIW.
 
Right, so this is where my confusion is coming from. Is "the essential" the same as "the ultimate" collection? I've noticed that someone described the song Pressure being on the dvd, and I don't see that song listed on the essential dvd....so you see????:confused:

I bought mine through one of the Amazon Marketplace sellers (Newbury Comics), but it appears the main Amazon.com has a couple in stock (as of this exact moment, anyway).

I never could find it locally, but just within the last 2 weeks I noticed a copy at a local Best Buy, FWIW.
 
Read this review and an explanation of the tracks found:
http://michaeldvd.com/Reviews/Reviews.asp?ID=997

Of particular interest to your question:
"The following videos are not featured on the Region 4 Disc"
Sometimes a Fantasy
The Night Is Still Young
Pressure
Keeping the Faith
Big Shot
Los Angelenos

The following videos are not featured on the Region 1 Disc;

New York State Of Mind
The River Of Dreams
We Didn't Start The Fire
I Go To Extremes
Leningrad
The Downeaster 'Alexa'
All About Soul
 
So there is a 5.1 mix of We Didn't Start the Fire.
(No explanation given as to the different track listings.)

Will a Region 4 DVD play on a U.S. player?
 
Just listened to this one again along with The Essential Collection and it's a fun disc with some good music videos and surround. The only drawback as has been stated before is the ac3 vs dts. The mixes are actually very nice. Maybe it should be re-released on blu-ray with higher resolution audio if it's available.
 
I just ordered an "overseas" version from eBay. When I get it, I'll check out the 5.1 mix of "...fire.." and the other non-US release tunes.
 
Oh boy!! I have been curious about those two DVDs before, but didn't realize there was a thread about them on here. Will order the R1 version and am eagerly awaiting your comments on the R2, Jon!
 
I purchased mine from CDImports a few weeks ago for $10.62 shipped. It is a PAL disc but Region Free with the same tracklist (24 tracks plus 2 bonus tracks) as the Region 2 release. It sounds pretty darn good for Dolby Digital.
 
I received the RC1 version yesterday, and while I haven't listened to it completely yet, I don't like it at all. The mixes (except those done for the SACDs, which I want even more now) are uneven, unfocused, and the sound is terrible IMHO. The first two tracks have virtually no bass (seriously, I put my foot on the sub and I barely felt it vibrate at all even when cranked up), and even after that, it sounds thin. Also, the videos are "video" videos, with acting and lots of sounds in them, so if you just listen to them, you get a lot of filler between or along with the music. Will give it a second chance, but overall, I don't think I will keep this DVD.
 
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