From: David Tetzlaff (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Feb 10 2010 - 22:48:26 PST
The NTSC Deren DVD readily available in the US is published under the
Mystic Fire label, and it looks to my eye very much as I remember the
old Mystic Fire VHS tape: decent enough but could be better compared
to By Brakhage and so on. Pip's VHS tapes are immaculately prepared,
but an old Mystic Fire VHS could well be suffering print-through, edge
wear, tracking problems, increased video noise and what-not by now.
The DVD will play cleanly, and it has "The Private Life of a Cat" on
it, so I think you should get one anyone. I would guess that Pip's PAL
DVD would offer what most people would consider the most pleasing
digital image, as few viewers share Pip's MPEG2 phobia*, and VHS has
more inherent noise and lower inherent resolution than DVD, which is
to say it looks softer and fuzzier.
*(All digital TV in the US, SD and HD, is MPEG2.)
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.