Very Best Of Sheryl Crow, The - The Videos DVD Review

First up is the video accompanying All I Wanna Do and whilst colours are rich and warm, the picture is a little noisy. The second video - Soak Up The Sun - by contrast displays a very detailed and sharp image and I started to think that I might be in for a bit of a visual treat! Unfortunately, that's about as good as it gets and from here on the images displayed are reasonably good at best. All are shot in 4:3, apart from a few included in non-anamorphic widescreen format that will have black bars surrounding all sides of the image when viewed on widescreen TVs. The video for My Favourite Mistake seems to be of the “artistic” type - the director has deliberately, I hope, included lots of scratches etc. to give the appearance of age and poor camera quality. A couple of the videos, Everyday Is A Winding Road and most of Leaving Las Vegas are shot in black and white.

Overall, though, my main gripe would be the noise in the images of almost all of the videos, although it's by no means too intrusive.

All that's been included here is a PCM stereo track with no Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix as an alternative. Not that this fact detracts from the audio quality on offer, though. Right from the off we are treated to very good stereophonic separation and detail - have a listen to the beginning of Everyday Is A Winding Road as an example. For some reason, though, I had to turn the volume on my amp way up to get even a semblance of loudness. Strange. Especially when you realise, as I quickly did, that the three song clips accompanying the different menu screens are recorded at least ten decibels louder than the main tracks, so be careful when hitting the menu button on your remote when playing this DVD or, like me, you'll be in for a bit of a shock! In fact the recording levels seems to vary, with the last three tracks being noticeably louder that the rest - which is a shame as it's the only negative in an otherwise strong audio performance.

No extras at all.
There was only one video on this release that I really enjoyed watching - Steve McQueen - for me the rest are forgettable at best and at worst actually detract from the aural experience - just take a gander at A Change Would Do You Good - shot in black and white and filmed in reverse at times it comes across as simply freaky, man! On the whole I found the videos a bit of a distraction and even the attractive Ms. Crow couldn't hold my attention at times.

Ultimately, though, it's the audio that saves the day here. I like nothing more than to know that my system is being allowed to express itself. Just have a listen to Everyday Is A Winding Road. Now I don't really like this song, it's just too droning and depressive-sounding for me. However, I do like what it does to my system! Bass is nice and deep, but never overblown, whilst the treble is handled sweetly and not at all shrill or overly intrusive.

So, audio quality is very good whilst picture-wise things are satisfactory. If you're a die-hard Sheryl Crow fan I'm sure you'll be happy with this purchase, but for anybody else perhaps the C.D. version would be a better bet.