eReviews
By Cheryl LaGuardia May 26, 2010Naxos video library
Naxos, www.naxosvideolibrary.com
CONTENT Naxos Video Library (NVL) is a subscription streaming music service providing full-length videos of ballets, concerts, documentaries, operas, and other musical productions. At the time of this review, there are over 250 videos available, including performances from artists and groups such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Royal Ballet, Martha Argerich, Plácido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti. Material comes from 11 labels, such as Arthaus Musik, EuroArts, Medici Arts, Naxos, Opus Arte, and TDK. Although most of what’s here right now is in the European classical domain, there is a bit of modern dance (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater) and contemporary American music (Philip Glass and Brian Eno) and a section titled “Musical Journeys,” which covers China and Uzbekistan. Naxos plans to offer approximately 500 titles by the summer.
The video is streamed via Adobe Flash at 700 Kbps and 2 Mbps (depending on the type of subscription), and the service is compatible with both PC and Mac computers. Special features include the ability to create custom clips that can be edited and added to personal playlists, follow along with a scrolling libretto text, access subtitles in up to five languages, access predefined video chapters (as well as arias and scene breaks), and search by artist, category, composer, festival, personnel, productions, role, and work venue.
USABILITY The home screen opens with a linked title bar, to the right of which is a keyword search box with a Go to Advanced Search link below it. Under that toolbar is another with the action buttons Home, Genres and Programmes, Labels, Composers, Artists, Production Personnel, Playlists, Advanced Search, and Help. Some of the action buttons turn into brief dropdown menus when moused over, while others (Composers, for example) lead to jump screens housing longer lists. Beneath that toolbar, the major portion of screen real estate is occupied by a changing display of the video “covers” of recent additions. At screen bottom are links to Home, Composers, Search, FAQ, User Guide, and Contact Us.
I first moused over the Genres and Programmes button, located “Ballets,” chose to look further by Composer, scrolled through the resulting alphabetical list down to “TCHAIKOVSKY, P.I.: Sleeping Beauty (The) (Royal Ballet, 2006),” and brought the video and its accompanying information up on my screen, at screen left and right. The video screen had the usual play, pause, and audio buttons, along with second-by-second markable time code intervals of the “chapters” (Introduction and opening credits, Marche, Scene dansante, Pas de six—Introduction, etc.) throughout the production, and the ability to select a clip and add it to my personal playlist (with a descriptive yet succinct “How do I use this?” link beneath the operative boxes). It’s intuitively easy to select and save clips—even I could do it! There’s a check box for turning subtitles on and off, as well as a radio button to choose the quality of the playback.
In a window at screen right of the video was a box with two tabs: Cast and Chapters. Under the Cast tab is a listing of Composer, Ballet Company, Choreographer, Staging, the Cast, Date of Concert, Venue, Playing Time, Catalogue Number, and UPC, as well as a brief annotation about its production. Under the Chapters tab was the listing of the 53 chapters in the production, from Introduction and Opening Credits to Closing Credits.
I turned my attention back to the video screen, hit Play, then noticed a little “sizing” button in the play toolbar. I chose to go to a full screen, and…45 minutes later wrenched myself from the mesmerizing dancing choreographed by the great Marius Petipa and performed beautifully by the Royal Ballet. The production playback was superb—seamless and, as far as I could tell, without any degradation from the original recording.
Although I was itching to watch more of The Sleeping Beauty, I next tried a simple search for “philip glass” and got two results: a brief signed composer biography (note to Naxos, the biography ends with, “For further information please visit Philip Glass’s”—I think there’s something missing at the end of that phrase) and a link to the video recording of a performance of Glass’s Satyagraha, done by the Wurttemberg State Theatre in 1983. It’s an interesting production, not least because it’s performed in Sanskrit, and the chapters in the window at screen right are in Sanskrit. Again, the video and audio are excellent; no pauses or hesitations or blips that I could find.
However, there were a few hiccups in browsing and searching. When I tried to browse the Genres and Programmes section for jazz productions, I got an almost blank screen with just the word “Jazz” at the top. I had seen an entry for a production of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports in the Documentaries section under Genres and Programmes, but when I tried doing a search for “brian eno,” or even just “eno,” I got zero results for the first and 114 results for the latter (the ENO that showed up was for the English National Opera Orchestra).
PRICING Pricing for NVL starts at $675 for five simultaneous users and goes up to $3,850 for an unlimited number of simultaneous users. Free trail available.
BOTTOM LINE Based on the product as it now stands, I give it a ten for video delivery and presentation and an eight for content and indexing, which makes it an overall nine. When more content is added to the file and that content is fully accessible via stable searching, the rating will go higher if the file is still in this pricing ballpark. Recommended at present for academic and public libraries serving classical music scholars and researchers.
