"If it LOOKS good, it IS good." :)

Your determination of what "looks good" has changed a lot in the last eighteen months, Greg. One only need to review some of your early uploads to see that.

So much so, that I believe people are agreeing more than before with your post-production choices (we'll leave content out of the fray for now).

So the quality and criteria of the observer is at least as important as the knee-jerk response, wouldn't you agree?

I think my waters are already muddied.

You want to see perfect levels and deinterlacing (if the footage needs it) on computer playback? Encode to Sony XDcam MXF using 16-235 levels leaving any interlace intact, then play back with the free Sony PDZVX10 with the graphics card acceleration enabled (without the GPU acceleration it looks terrible). The levels will be rescaled to an average computer monitor's levels perfectly and some sort of perfect BOB deinterlace will be applied. Looks freekin awesome!

I always encode to 16-235, but 0-235 can look very good. Levels above 235 blow out pretty much everywhere but blacks at 0 look nice and give good contrast. I used 0-235 for a while when I was using Flash encoders and delivery but stopped when I began using Vimeo and Youtube because those encoders stretch the blacks down.

musicvid10, I hope you mean I am getting better because I honestly can't tell. I'm still learning the tools and tricks and using commercial productions as reference.

far as levels go, I have my TV generally calibrated, then "calibrate" my Vegas screen the same way, and things mostly look identical in preview, on my TV, at work TVs, ipads, youtube, vimeo, and sometimes I go to Best Buy and test a disc on one of their new setups.

For my last effort, I tried 16-235, but it grayed up my aspect mask and revealed all the panning rotating I was doing on the video clips (that I thought were) behind the mask.

Yes, I meant that as a compliment ;?)

wwjd said, "For my last effort, I tried 16-235, but it grayed up my aspect mask and revealed all the panning rotating I was doing on the video clips (that I thought were) behind the mask. "

The problem with calibrating that way is only you will see it the way you want it to be. Others who have properly adjusted TV's and/or monitors will see that 'grayed up' mask and all the panning rotation and it will NOT look good to them.

The reason for the 16 to 235, the included test patterns and the scopes is to make sure that what you are putting out is what it is supposed to be. Learn to use them!

While I wish there was just 0 to 255 and be done with it and even though I did not say it correctly earlier at least there is the 16 to 235, test patterns and the scopes that greatly help in making sure that my videos are what they should be and eliminates the guess work out of it.

Side Note: I need to remember NOT to post on here when I am not doing so well. The other day my blood sugar got all the way down to 26. When that happens, I do not think very well for a while!

right. I had to RE-RENDER my finished video with a fully black mask to fix, but it's a shame levels lifted that to reveal the clip movement below. I still don't have a solid answer for that when using levels.

My 2 Euro cents:

My Canon HF M41 records video in the range 14-255. I put all camera footage on a dedicated track and during editing convert it to 0-255 using the levels FX for that track only. In this way I can match it with graphics, titles, etc. (which already are 0-255 to start with) on other, dedicated tracks. For rendering I do a Computer to Studio RGB conversion (0-255 to 16-235) for the entire project and everything comes out perfect.

The levels range of video cameras can be quite different and should be taken into account, There once was a posting about the way different cameras respond but I couldn't find it anymore.

Lou