james-s5985 wrote: "Thanks for the video! But what is your conclusion from that? I don't understand."

The members of the forum have covered my thoughts on the subject.

Nick Hope: "That's the same behaviour that I see."

Marco: "Three, at least."

SecondWind-SK: "Facts just get in the way of perceptions."

So, my video has gone through at least a small peer review which is the basis of all science.

Kinvermark observed that the levels of the different rendered samples were similar except for a large shift on the waveform monitor for the MOV sample rendered by Joe Austin in Resolve.

david-tu responded "Resolve has default settings, but not automatic. If you look at your preferences when setting up a project and when rendering, you will see settings for color space."

I found that to be true...

astar had already mentioned that "Most players will expand levels, which can look like gamma issues. This is an editors error in not having the levels correct passing through the workflow, and not the software."

Musicvid explained how Vegas handles levels: "...one must manually set levels in Vegas to conform the color space. It is not automatic, Vegas does not scan your source, does not read VUI flags, does not engage in guesswork, and does not correct rgb stills, such as your smpte bars to REC 601/709. It's always been this way, and it's a design choice, not a bug." and provided a solution for conforming full range levels for broadcast in Vegas Pro: "one would apply a Studio RGB filter on the output to render mp4 from your still." There are other ways to accomplish this in Vegas.

Kinvermark also asked: "There does appear to be some minor difference on the vectorscope on all except the uncompressed.  Why would that be?"

Musicvid responded: "We call that 'lossy compression.'"

Nick Hope observed about the codecs that use lossy compression: "The smaller dots that move the most on the vectorscope are the transitions (borders) between the colour blocks. Those aren't clean transitions in the original test pattern JPEG, and the lossy compression changes them significantly."

I'm still looking, but I haven't found a codec except uncompressed that shows no difference on the vectroscope.

Here's something to think about while you're sitting in traffic on the freeway. If you're not recording uncompressed video from the camera sensor, what you're seeing is already compromised. Then, one could also wonder if the camera sensor sees the light the same you do? Does your wife see the scene the same as you? I'll answer that, No!