MindCandy Volume 3’s First Review
Posted by Trixter on November 30, 2011
Blu-ray.com gave MindCandy Volume 3 a Recommended rating with 4 out of 5 stars, and I couldn’t be happier. I really respect blu-ray.com’s reviews for their specific coverage of picture quality, sound quality, and extras — the things that blu-ray massively improves on over DVD — so getting a good rating from them means a lot to me. Picture Quality got a 5 out of 5, of course :-)
One of the things we got dinged on was the audio rating (3 out of 5), not because the sound was bad, but because the audio tracks weren’t lossless. I agree lossless audio would have been best, but we couldn’t use lossless because of a technical limitation in Adobe Encore. Encore had trouble dealing with .wav files over 2gig, which was the original RIFF .WAV format’s limitation (the W64 and RF64 extensions to .wav have overcome this, but Encore doesn’t support them). At 3.5 hours of stereo audio @ 48KHz @ 24-bit resolution, a lossless track is 3.6gig. I ran into odd random problems trying to use lossless 24-bit audio, but had no problems at all using Dolby AC3 audio. So I chose the devil I knew.
Oldskooler Ramblings 
maz said
At 224 Kbps nobody would be able to hear the difference anyway …
Nate said
Jim, congrats on finishing this disc and the great quality. I’m excited to order it to complete my MC collection. Excellent work, and you deserve a break from this.
Trixter said
It would not have been possible without your help, sir!
phoenix said
Not to mention we would have to acquire lossless soundtracks for each demo, given that most come with mp3s or oggs below 224kbps. We got.. one lossless track, at least.
Jay said
Hey Jim! I just “finished” watching MC3 over a few days. I haven’t kept up with the scene since 2001 or so and I have to say the modern demos BLEW ME AWAY. It helps that the capture quality is top notch and the production values you guys put into the disc are way beyond anything I’ve ever seen from “hobbyist” producers. Even though I’m just watching the DVD I was supremely impressed. Great selection of demos to include, yeah some groups got a pretty big share of the airtime (ASD, Farbrausch, MFX) but they DO deserve it.
My only complaint is that I wish you’d put the special features onto the DVD… I hate Sony & the Blue-ray Association’s business practices and refuse to give them any of my money, so I won’t be adopting anytime soon. I understand why you did it the way you did though, going to have to borrow someone else’s player at some point…
I also picked up MC2 at the same time (bought MC1 years ago) which was also very cool & very well done. I never would have seen most of those otherwise. BTW I ordered from Maz and they were delivered lightning quick. Great service, thanks!
So congrats again to you and the whole production team for a real work of art. Greets from an old scener musician from “back in the day”!
Jay
Trixter said
Thanks for the kind words, it helps validate the 5 years (on and off) of work we put into it.
Since the special features would have taken up two additional DVD-9s, making it a four-disc package (and increasing the cost, which we didn’t want to do), hopefully you can see why we didn’t try to shoehorn them in. Even on the DVD-9, with all my tricks, I’m still unhappy with the visual quality in places (but if you didn’t notice, I guess I did my job well :-) I hope someday that you get to see the blu-ray, it’s truly stunning.
If it’s any consolation, the Blu-ray association’s business practices delayed the project a bit, because the licensing and encryption fees, at the beginning, were cost-prohibitive for small independent productions. They later reduced that cost significantly, which allowed our project to continue.