Product Description

1) Building A Mystery
2) Plenty
3) Hold On
4) Good Enough
5) Do What You Have To Do
6) Witness
7) Wait
8) I Will Remember You
9) Ice
10) I Love You
11) I Will Not Forget You
12) Path Of Thorns
13) Mary
14) Adia
15) Fear
16) Elsewhere
17) Vox
18) Into The Fire
19) Possession
20) Ice Cream
21) Sweet Surrender
22) Fumbling Toward Ecstacy
23) Angel

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11149 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 1999-10-12
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Live, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 114 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
This video companion to the Canadian singer-songwriter's triumphant live album confirms in sight what that recording advanced in sound--Sarah McLachlan and her fine, flexible stage band have evolved into a superb live performing unit, breathing added fire and nuance into McLachlan songs that were already stunning in their original studio versions. Always a strong, charismatic singer, McLachlan now conjures a rare balance of delicacy and power, measured here in performances of signature songs that add a new, more muscular edge matching her band's rock firepower. Thus, "Possession" expands beyond its already sensual promise to touch on truly erotic abandon, while "Building a Mystery" focuses its portrait of a narcissistic poseur with a harder edge and a newly amended, R-rated lyric that's entirely appropriate.

Shot on McLachlan's 1998 headlining tour, the concert captures her in a more theatrical and frankly glamorous (if slightly funky) vein than her fabled Lilith Fair shows: in her floor-length blue gown, sparkling blue mascara, and bare feet, she evokes a more demure, Gen-X cousin to Cabaret's Sally Bowles. With 23 featured songs, Mirrorball on video adds 9 tracks not heard on the CD. The audio mixing is generally excellent, especially on the DVD version, which provides some hall ambience but retains a front-array, proscenium placement to instruments. Shot on film, rather than videotape, the concert preserves the stunning, subtle lighting effects of McLachlan's touring production, albeit at slight visual sacrifice in lower-light segments in which the resolution is grainier. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews

Outstanding video a must own for Sarah fans
If you're a Sarah McLachlan fan and you own a DVD player, buy this video now. If you don't own a DVD player, go buy one, THEN buy this video. If you're not yet a Sarah fan, this is a good place to start!

Sarah is brilliant here, as she is in all her live shows. The choice of songs is excellent, and the "extra songs" (not on the "Mirrorball" CD) are a treat.

Technically, the DVD is terrific. Camera shots are varied nicely, with crane moves mixed with slow zooms, and the cinematography does justice to the sparkling staging of Sarah's shows. The audio is superb, with excellent miking of both vocals and instruments. (Audiophiles: soundstaging could be somewhat better, and the use of compressors robs the recording of some of the dynamic punch of the live event. The sound is rich, however, and the low end has much more definition than I've seen in a concert video before.)

One reviewer mentioned audio synchronization issues: on a quality DVD player, this is not an issue -- players with inferior decoders or D/A converters may be unable to keep up with the data coming off the disc, however, resulting in apparent delays between the audio and video. I use an external D/A converter with my DVD player, and I've not seen any synchronization problems with this disc.

All in all, very highly recommended!!!

Ignore the naysayers!
I absolutely love it. Like many concert videos, it waspieced together from two back-to-back shows; that's how they makethem--they film two performances and take the best shots and make one video from it. That doesn't mean that the performances are fake. And as for the editing, maybe a few fades would have been nice, but overall I find it very enjoyable (love the close-ups of Sarah!) Of my current collection, this is the DVD I watch most often, and I haven't even been a fan of hers for very long.

As for the picture quality, it is fantastic. I can't rate the 5.1 channel mix because I do not yet have a Dolby Digital receiver, but I am very happy with the quality of the stereo mix, and I think that's all you need for a music program anyway. END

Performance overcomes the poor production
The performance captured here is tremendous as I think every would agree.

I didn't mind the visuals either, even though I was reluctant to get a 4:3 aspect ratio concert DVD. It scaled onto 16:9 not that badly. I liked the grainy film look but I suspect the visual quality and sync errors people are reporting are probably due to the DVD production house cramming 90 minutes of A/V plus extra angles into the stream. I appreciated being able to focus on an set angle on some of the tracks but I think they used 4 angles for the entire duration of the concert. I'm basing this on the fact my player was able to detect 4 angles at all times through the disc, even if those weren't 4 distinct angles. That excess material probably steals bandwidth from the overall visual quality.

Audio is another story though. I first came back here to check if my DVD was defective though because the 5.1 audio track sounded absolutely horrible - all boomy and full of echoes as if it had been recorded in a rink. It was bad enough that I had to double-check my equipment and then search here to confirm the source is the DVD itself.

I suspect the people not complaining about the audio are maybe not audiophiles or more probably they are listening to the 2 channel track, which is excellent. To my surprise and against my better judgement I find the only way I can listen to this disc is to use the 2 channel track and then let the receiver add the ambience - not a normal practice on my part and one which would ordinarily degrade the audio rather than improve it.

How does one rate this then? I'd want to give it a 5/5 based on the great peformance and the length. But a concert DVD like this needs to be rated against some of the standard bearers and I was very disappointed in how the audio stacks up. Not that it would have to exceed say Eagles DTS, but a concert DVD should not attract negative attention because of its poor sound.

I'd want to chop at least a couple of points for the poor audio and 4:3 AR, but since the stereo track serves as an OK substitute in this case I'm going to go with a 4/5