Nick has a user-created database of camera levels. It should get you started with which shoot full vs video. You can easily do your own tests as described here (shoot with lens cap on for black and a light source for white, then check the histogram).

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/survey-what-min-max-levels-does-your-cam-shoot--84677/?page=1

Another thing worth mentioning (sorry if it has already been) is currently, proxies do not render at the correct levels, so even in the new mode, they won't appear correctly on the preview screen. Until a patch can fix this, if you want to see your levels properly, just disable the proxy by setting preview quality to "good" or "best", do your coloring, and then when editing, switch it back to "preview" or "draft" to re-enable the proxies and edit.

Need a fix for this 👍

@set

"Rendering option: for uploading to Youtube / FB / IGTV via desktop, then I can choose Full Range option."

For YouTube usage I would recommend to render to limited range because the YouTube decoder reads and uses that meta data.

From my experiences the only way to find out is checking scopes. You can't rely on meta data or on the RGB/Y'CbCr property.

If you use a "real" full range video which is flagged as "limited" it would appear clipped same way in the waveform monitor, no matter how the scopes are set.

100% absolutely, unequivocally, necessarily.

It is not a PhD ("Push here, Dummy") button.

creating a new project / opening a clip shot in CINE4 (A7iii) will use full range. as expected.

@AVsupportMay I ask how you determined that? You clicked on the clip properties and it said color range: full?

I just opened a Cine 4 (a6500) clip and Vegas has it as color range: limited when using 8-bit full range mode. Because of that, in 8-bit full range mode, highlights are clipped.

Looking at my blacks/whites test Cine 4 is 16-255, which makes sense as it appears to be a variant of Cine 1 which is also 16-255. Sony help guide confirms this for Cine 1 (and Cine 3/4 reference Cine 1):
https://helpguide.sony.net/di/pp/v1/en/contents/TP0000909109.html

@AVsupportMay I ask how you determined that?

OK, I have to revise my initial statement.

What I did initially after realising my old VP17 project opened up in 'legacy video levels' is to change the project settings to 'start all projects with these settings' to the new full range pixel format. Selection will be honoured. Thus I was seeing the CINE4 clip "correctly".

However, if I check actual clip media settings, the 'Color Range' selector reveals 'Undefined' which suggests no metadata information available.

In order to determine what undefined actually defaults to, I change the setting to 'Full Range' to match what I believed the clip should be, but instead I see the blacks being pushed up:

in both occasions waveform was set to full range ('studio' unticked).

@RogerS I was always led to believe CINE4 was 0-109% [derived HG409G33] but percent and absolute bit-level value can be two different things, hence my confusion, as I thought 0% equals 0-Bit value.

It starts to make sense now if 0%=video levels=16, then 109%=video levels=(235+21)= 256 full scale.

So for me, wanting to edit for computer levels, seemingly the best approach is to leave clip data unchanged, 'undefined' ;-)

Done some more investigations: Running Mediainfo for my Sony A7iii CINE4 sample file reveals 'Color range: Limited' So, not sure why Vegas doesn't see that:

General
Complete name                            : D:\Mediafiles\A7iii\8-07-2020\C0021.MP4
Format                                   : XAVC
Codec ID                                 : XAVC (XAVC/mp42/iso2)
File size                                : 224 MiB
Duration                                 : 36 s 0 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 52.2 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-07-08 04:29:31
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-07-08 04:29:31

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.2
Format settings                          : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 2 frames
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 36 s 0 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 49.3 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 60.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 50.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.476
Stream size                              : 212 MiB (95%)
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-07-08 04:29:31
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-07-08 04:29:31
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
Codec configuration box                  : avcC

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Big / Signed
Codec ID                                 : twos
Duration                                 : 36 s 0 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 6.59 MiB (3%)
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-07-08 04:29:31
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-07-08 04:29:31

Other
Type                                     : meta
Duration                                 : 36 s 0 ms

-------------------------

Also, finally found the first working 4K sample of Sony A7Siii XAVCS-Intra codec 10-Bit 4:2:2 color range=full here (this link was shared on fb A7Siii user group) . Loading this clip will correctly identify clip colour range as Full.

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1w_HHx8s1lEQdyBAehcG1TaXUty_VpY48?fbclid=IwAR0KJuFp7zGcT1fn1DRfSFnOGQMpkvSIZnvp_byHgS2RFeMa4DTCCy9WepI

General
Complete name                            : F:\EditMedia\A7Siii JM files\C0160.mp4
Format                                   : XAVC
Codec ID                                 : XAVC (XAVC/mp42/iso2)
File size                                : 448 MiB
Duration                                 : 15 s 520 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 242 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-08-01 15:35:52
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-08-01 15:35:52

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High 4:2:2 Intra@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : No
Format settings, GOP                     : N=1
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 15 s 516 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 229 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Standard                                 : Component
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:2
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 1.154
Stream size                              : 424 MiB (95%)
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-08-01 15:35:52
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-08-01 15:35:52
Color range                              : Full
Codec configuration box                  : avcC

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Big / Signed
Codec ID                                 : twos
Duration                                 : 15 s 520 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 2.84 MiB (1%)
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-08-01 15:35:52
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-08-01 15:35:52

Other
Type                                     : meta
Duration                                 : 15 s 516 ms

-------------

I feel like the lonely foot soldier trapped for decades on a jungle island, and still fighting the same battles against invisible adversaries. Is someone now telling me the war is over? I'm not sure I know how to live that way...

But it's what everyone wants to be "like" Premiere. We have gone from from needing to learn the model from the ground-up, to needing to learn when deus ex machina is making a mistake by the Law of GIGO. And there will be many. Progress indeed makes strange turns along the way...

LOL. I've always seen you that way! Yes, it seems Vegas is doing more, so you don't have to. But yes, it does help to understand how it works under the hood. Like all my sister knows, is you put the car in D and go. And she always wonders what that red light on the dashboard means. Marco's explanation is awesome. I hope they include that in Vegas help.

;?)

OK, I have to revise my initial statement.

What I did initially after realising my old VP17 project opened up in 'legacy video levels' is to change the project settings to 'start all projects with these settings' to the new full range pixel format. Selection will be honoured. Thus I was seeing the CINE4 clip "correctly".

However, if I check actual clip media settings, the 'Color Range' selector reveals 'Undefined' which suggests no metadata information available.

In order to determine what undefined actually defaults to, I change the setting to 'Full Range' to match what I believed the clip should be, but instead I see the blacks being pushed up:

in both occasions waveform was set to full range ('studio' unticked).

@RogerS I was always led to believe CINE4 was 0-109% [derived HG409G33] but percent and absolute bit-level value can be two different things, hence my confusion, as I thought 0% equals 0-Bit value.

It starts to make sense now if 0%=video levels=16, then 109%=video levels=(235+21)= 256 full scale.

So for me, wanting to edit for computer levels, seemingly the best approach is to leave clip data unchanged, 'undefined' ;-)

@AVsupport I think I see what's going on here. The undefined issue is because you started with a legacy video levels project and then changed levels in project properties. It doesn't appear to automatically update.

Could you just open a new instance of VP 18 with 8-bit full range, drag one Cine 4 clip to the timeline and see how it's treated? It should be limited (even though it is not, at least on the white side). Change to full, blacks will be lifted and then you can fix this with levels. Otherwise you will lose whites.

So for the sake of avoiding confusion, I'd recommend sticking with legacy levels for old projects.

what worries me more @RogerS is that it seems that the 8-bit XAVC-S codec info doesn't get read properly as it should and the 10-bit does. Anyway it's a nice improvement and we are heading in the right direction ;-)

As mentioned, undefined Y'CbCr will be processed exactly same way as limited color range. So even if there might be some kind of bug left by not carrying this meta data correctly in this particular case, it wouldn't matter in the end for meta data "limited" media.

Bullet point 2 above. Would be neat if possible to have a tool to batch process all source files for levels metadata before ingest and set the flags accordingly to any that have no metadata flags but that would require some magic.

what worries me more @RogerS is that it seems that the 8-bit XAVC-S codec info doesn't get read properly as it should and the 10-bit does. Anyway it's a nice improvement and we are heading in the right direction ;-)

Did you redo your test with a clean project? I did exactly what you did- used a legacy levels project from 17, which has 8-bit XAVC-S as undefined, and then a new 8-bit full range project which read the metadata properly as limited range. Though as Marco points out there's no real difference. It's not really limited range, so you still need to change levels in a full range timeline to full range to get the superwhites back.

I'm less concerned about 10-bit files from a camera two months before release, though it's nice to see it works.

To do a bit of experimenting testing of this new feature the GH5 can be useful (i’m sure there are other cams that do also) as you can set the Luminance ranges, i.e. for 8 bit or 10 bit. Example 8 bit options Full, Studio/Limited and 16-255.

As mentioned, undefined Y'CbCr will be processed exactly same way as limited color range

As you would have seen in the mediainfo above, both examples were YUV, one read fine (10bit), the other one didn't.

YUV is a wrong naming for Y'CbCr. YUV is for analog video only, it doesn't exist for digital video.

That's true, and it's a common misnaming error that is so entrenched in commerce that it will never go away. Same as "Gigabyte" which is a misnomer almost always used to mean "Gibibyte." Another one is using the contraction "sRGB," a color space, instead of "Studio RGB," which is Vegas' name for Limited Range. There are others.

Fortunately, digital Y'CbCr is close enough to YUV in practice for them to to be considered kissin' cousins. Saying "Y prime Cb Cr" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

YUV is a wrong naming for Y'CbCr. YUV is for analog video only, it doesn't exist for digital video.

1, the Chinese call "Feuerwehr" always as Feuerrettung, if they see the official word Feuerwehr they must think it at least 2 seconds what does that mean, geschweige denn gesprochen. Same was to Y'CbCr, you explained and explained, and finally you are tired and say: It's YUV. And people answer: Yes, it is!

2, YUV still exists by digitizing and will be understood by (digital) shooting in that way, because of the chroma subsampling.

It's mandatory for my job to use such terms as correct as possible to avoid confusion, such as it makes no sense to call digital video "PAL" or "NTSC" just because of the frame rates or to call "luma" "luminance". Wide spread misnamings to which people get used doesn't ease this.

I'm glad Vegas Creative Software almost got it right in the render window, if they only had made that YCbCr to Y'CbCr. 😃

The fact that many credentialed professionals use terms interchangeably and even acknowledge ambiguity and disagreement within their peer base, makes precision more difficult, and becomes a source of circular arguments, which benefit no one.

I gave up many perfectioist expectations for social health reasons (the "Sheldon Effect"), and discovered there is real educational merit in simply being "less wrong."