March 20th, 2006 Concert. Worcester, MA U.S.A.

[Richard]

Congratulations and thanks to Tim and Gerrit!

That is a wonderful video of Hayley's beautiful performance. Listening on my pocket earphones I was very impressed with the sound quality, particularly the richness of Hayley's voice. It must have sounded incredible in the theatre, so well done to the sound engineers.

Towards the end of "The Water Is Wide" the guitarist produced a sound that reminded me of a pedal steel guitar, giving the song a country feel. If Hayley wants to extend her range of styles even further, her voice would definitely suit the gentler country ballads.

Many thanks again! i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gif

Richard

[postscript]

richnorri said:

Congratulations and thanks to Tim and Gerrit!

That is a wonderful video of Hayley's beautiful performance. Listening on my pocket earphones I was very impressed with the sound quality, particularly the richness of Hayley's voice. It must have sounded incredible in the theatre, so well done to the sound engineers.

Towards the end of "The Water Is Wide" the guitarist produced a sound that reminded me of a pedal steel guitar, giving the song a country feel. If Hayley wants to extend her range of styles even further, her voice would definitely suit the gentler country ballads.

Many thanks again! i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gif

Richard

It may depend upon the quality of the download which in my case suffered, but that is not a point of criticism for the effort. The effort was unique, good photography and the editing superb, Gerrit.

I have a friend who has been in A/V since he bought his first 8mm where you ran 25 feet, turned it round to run the other 25ft then the processing people developed it and slit the 16mm film in half, which is why early 8mm was one-slotted. Before then, I think he used 9.5mm.

Now that raises an interesting(?) question. One of the aspects of North America I love is that they understand miles, feet and inches, measurements increasingly beyond the comprehension of the British! How then, since Hollywood is really the start of film was it measured in mm? Any ideas, anyone?

However, simply, I notice the edit fades because such observation is second nature to me and the electronic 'splicing' (I recall the days of the edit block for cutting and splicing in film) was superb.

A very well done job. Thank you for all your efforts.

Peter

[Dave]

postscript said:

richnorri said:

Congratulations and thanks to Tim and Gerrit!

That is a wonderful video of Hayley's beautiful performance. Listening on my pocket earphones I was very impressed with the sound quality, Richard

It may depend upon the quality of the download which in my case suffered, but that is not a point of criticism for the effort. The effort was unique, good photography and the editing superb, Gerrit.
Peter

Hi Peter and everyone, yes it's an excellent video montage of Hayley and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well done to the cameraman Tim and editor Gerrit! A capella "She Moves" - wow!

I notice the widely differing opinions about the sound quality. Well Peter, all successfully downloaded copies of the video *should have* identical sound quality in the file - it's in the nature of digital audio.

There is certainly a slight audio interference throughout my copy of the recording - clicks a bit like on vinyl records and its annoyance is subjective. To some people it will be very noticeable; others will hardly notice it at all. The type and quality of audio playback equipment, speakers, headphones etc. will also affect how annoying the clicks are (or aren't). As an old vinyl man, it doesn't bother me at all (the worst kind is clipped/over modulated audio and there's none of that here).

I may clean it up a bit electronically and if I do I'll post short "before" and "after" clips of the audio so people can decide if it's worthhile doing the whole thing.

Cheers,

Dave

[timj]

The Fugi345 videos are better than I hoped, Thanks to Gerrit..I miss Hayley when she's elsewhere in the world,as I'm sure many of you do. Glad you got to see she is alive and well, and thanks for all the videos you've posted for me...TimJ
(I'll do better next time, needed more optical zoom)

[Dave]

timj said:

The Fugi345 videos are better than I hoped, Thanks to Gerrit..I miss Hayley when she's elsewhere in the world,as I'm sure many of you do. Glad you got to see she is alive and well, and thanks for all the videos you've posted for me...TimJ
(I'll do better next time, needed more optical zoom)

For anyone who's never tried this, it very hard indeed to get anything watchable or listenable from an amateur handheld camera in the audience of a concert.

Tim, yours is one of the best I've seen. It was a great effort - editors and sound tweakers can edit and tweak all they want, but they have got to have good quality footage to work with at the start and your is certainly that. Great stuff!

Dave

[gareth]

Hehe,

That video has resulted in an interesting debate - If I am not mistaken, Tim used a Fuji photo camera that can also take videos, the length of which depends on your memory card. The resulting video was 15 frames per second, with a mono sound comparable to I'd say about 128kbps mp3 (well, that's the rate, but of course the sound does remain a little bit "tinny").

I was faced with two problems though - Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker had problems with the video track - the only thing they could show was coloured blocks ....

And, Windows Movie Maker also had problems rendering the original sound properly - it came out badly distorted.

Good old VirtualDub came to the rescue though. I first re-recorded the sound, so it became 44.100khz Stereo PCM. Of course, it isn't true stereo, as the result would be a sound in which on each channel is identical. Still, I think that would make for more pleasant listening then when you're stuck with just one channel in the first place (especially when listening via earphones).

Then I went about editing the sound, with a fade in and fade out as appropriate, and in a few places I simply cut out a few hundredths of a second of bad sound distortion. (I envisaged that this would hardly affect synchronisation.)

I recombined the edited soundtrack with the original video track, and in VirtualDub created a new version of the original AVI, this time using a codec that Windows Movie Maker could handle.

Finally, I put the four videos together in Movie Maker, applying a fade bewtween parts. (The trickiest part was The Water Is Wide - you will have noticed an obvious transition there towards the end of the song - I had to experiment a bit with the duration of the transition there, to make it look not too artificial.)

All in all, I think I spent about 3 hours on it - and I am aware of the crackles in the sound track, but I didn't think they were too much of a nuisance.

I had great fun though doing this - this video business has become somewhat of a hobby for me - and I think that by the time I retire from active work, I may well have something to keep me occupied .

However, Dave, if you managed to reduce/remove those crackles, by all means - give me a link, and I'll download the file - and if it does appear the other sound is virtually untouched, I'l gladly replace my video with your version!

Cheers,

Gerrit

P.S. There was one thing that struck me - I saw Hayley do someting in the middle of one of the songs that I have never seen any singer do in the middle of a concert - did anyone else notice that same thing

[roger]

Huh! I never noticed the crackles until Dave pointed them out!

Yes Gerrit, I noticed the unusual um... shall we say... use of the props during 'Hine e Hine' but I'm not saying a word!...

Cheers Hayley!

Roger

[gareth]

Hehe, Roger,

In Dutch, "prop" is something that might be used to stop some liquid from flowing ...

Cheers,

Gerrit

[Caitlin]

Thanks so much for the video! It's wonderful. It gave me the chills watching and listening to it!

<3 Caite

[jim1009]

Hello again everyone,

Been really busy with work this week, sorry I haven't got back sooner. Apparently my thread has been doing real well. As far as a review goes, Hayley sang as beautiful as ever. She changed her dress for the second half, my 13 year old daughter fell in love with it. I am uploading a few pictures so you can see them both. If you haven't already done so already, go to the Melbourne, FL thread and read Yong-Le and Bob's reviews, they have already said all the wonderful things about her performance in FL that I could say here.
The issue has been raised about Hayley not filling up the hall. I think the two biggest issue's are advertising and name recognition. Hayley is still building up her exposure in the U.S.A., this is something that takes time. I have not yet heard any of her songs on the radio here. Airplay is the fastest way to get people familiar with her. Hopefully, she will have a crossover hit from Odyssey and that will generate the sales and name recognition she deserves. As for advertising, I spoke with a lady at Worcester Music. I told her that I live an hour away in New Hampshire and I only knew about the show from Hayley's fan-site. The on-line ticketing agencies such as Ticketmaster did not show her concert. She said they advertise in the Worcester area. The tickets are sold at the box office in the hall and at Worcester Music which is in an office next to the hall. I think this has an affect on ticket sales. Living in New Hampshire I do not read the Worcester newspaper even though I am originally from there, and people in Boston read the Boston newspapers. This lack was obviously a problem for this show, even though it was well attended. If they had advertised in Boston I am sure the show would have sold out.
Worcester does have a vibrant music scene. There are venues that hold a couple hundred, some a thousand to a couple thousand up to an arena that holds 15,000. I have seen many world famous musicians in Worcester over the years. I am uploading a scan of this seasons shows at Mechanics Hall to show you what they bring there on a yearly basis. The shows at Mechanics Hall have been well attended over the years and do have a fan base in the area. The types of shows they normally have are classical orchestra, jazz and some dance.

Jim

No flash photograhy. 3.3 megapixel camera. Without flash, aperture stays open longer and most pictures were to blurry to post.

Mechanics Hall Stage





1st Half










2nd Half










Prgram Scans











The most important picture.

Hayley and I.

[Caitlin]

Hi There Jim!
Thanks so much for the lovely pictures and scans! Only thing though...in the programme she's mentioned as 17 and then 18. Whoops!

Which dress did your daughter fall in love with? They're both nice.

<3 Caite

[wormy]

Nice pictures there Jim!
I wished I had taken more pictures last week.
Personally I think she looked better in her 2nd dress.. It looks so good on her. She wore the same dresses and had the same setting as well.

Yong-Le

[Richard]

Hello Jim!

Many thanks for sharing the beautiful pictures of Hayley and the scans of the programme. I think Hayley looks wonderful in both dresses, but then I also like her red top in the photograph with you. I'm pleased to see you've put that one in your avatar! i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gif

Best Wishes from London,

Richard

[postscript]

Thanks Jim for that superb report on Worcester. It was worth the wait and no apologies needed--we all have to survive in the real world between our idyllic trips to the Hayley land of dreams.

The quoted interview was great and your pictures superb. I too like the 2nd half dress--in fact, I think I prefer her in long dresses, perhaps because of her short stature but then the rich yellow dress she wore on her last concerts in the UK before Christmas was magnificent with all its gold adornments.

I keep meaning to ask her and always forget, just how high are those heels? I'm guessing they're three inches and only someone trained in ballet could walk in them!

Peter

[postscript]

Ah yes, in my last post Jim I forgot to say your twosome with Hayley was excellent, if only my hair wasn't such a mess in mine!

Peter