Acentric Video is the company that has produced the video of my daughter's ballet recitals for the last 4 years. (South Suburban Academy of Ballet & Dance) The first 3 years were okay, the video was not that great, but it looked professionally filmed, the DVD that was sent out said "Acentric Video" on the back. The DVD menu was nicely done and usable, and the video was not the best prodution value, but for a small kids' ballet recital it was fine - probably better than I could have done.
In the past I've been glad to have these DVD's (even at $35 a pop, even though my daughter is only actually in them for a total of 3-4 minutes) because I could take them with us when we travel out of state and show all the relatives, and they don't feel like they miss out so much, because they can't travel all the way to Colorado just for a dance recital for a 7 year old.
Well, THIS YEAR I don't know if the video was done by someone else at the same company or WHAT happened, but this DVD is destined to be a coaster for my coffee cup, because it is not up to par with the quality of the previous videos. The first thing I noticed was that the name "Acentric video" and their logo is suspiciously missing from the packaging. I guess that was just the foreshadowing of things to come. I put the DVD in the player and the menu is not only hard to navigate because of the titles being in white, then highlighting in yellow (really?) but the main menu has a "Play all" option, then a scene selection option, and when you scroll to "scene selection, if you don't immediately press play, the cursor will jump back to the "Play All" button within 1 second. Seriously, I'm pretty coordinated and it took me 7 tries to select the scene selection option. I'm not counting the number of times it took me to realize that the scene selection button actually WAS highlighting, because it was almost undetectable that the white was turning to light yellow for less than 1 second and then reverting back to the first button.
But packing and the menu are just minor details, at least I have a video of my daughter dancing in her recital to show the grandparents, right? Ummm, sort-of. Something I noticed right away as soon as I started the play button on her dance was that the aspect ratio is strangely out of whack - everything is really tall and skinny. At first I'm thinking, okay, suburban soccer moms going to extreme lengths not to have to face the fact that their kids are eating a little too much McDonalds... but as I flipped to different dances and watched they are all this way - there is no "widescreen" like the previous videos, to the right and left of the video are blacked out, exactly like you're watching an old DVD in "Full Screen" for old fashioned tv's. Even that wouldn't bother me so much if the dancers looked normal, but they don't, everything is tall & skinny, very noticeably, and unrealistically so. Okay, that's distracting, but once you adjust to seeing it that way (if you can) the next thing I noticed is that the camera is so zoomed in on the stage, my daughter is CUT OUT of half of her dance. I mean she's actually OUT OF THE FRAME of the video for more than half of the time that she is on stage.
Is this useful for showing grandparents my daughter dancing in the recital? Maybe if they take their glasses off, sit all the way accross the room and I get them drunk first, then tell them she's the one in the middle, because that's the only girl that's in the whole video. Oh no wait, I just watched it again, even SHE isn't in the whole video - NONE of the girls are. They keep dancing right out of the frame. At the end the girls line up accross the stage, in their final pose for the last 3-4 seconds of the music - the camera-person finally zooms out far enough so you can see all the girls about 1 second AFTER the music ends. I've looked at some of the other dances as well, it seems that they are ALL this way.
I am just so dissapointed, this DVD is pathetic and useless to me. I am so angry that I spent $35 on this - what a waste of money! I could have just video taped the dance myself and the dress rehearsal and gotten a better video than this. (which I did try to do, but some little kids came running by and bumped into me and there's a big bleep in the middle of the video where I'm trying to catch my camera before it falls over the balcony) so now I have NOTHING to take with us on our trip to see the grandparents next weekend. FANTASTIC!!
Now I know EXACTLY why the Acentric Video logo, etc is missing from the DVD case - I wouldn't put my name on this piece of ____ either!! read more