Marco said:
"From what I tested today for PPro this is only true if your video input is in between the range of 16-235 what it almost never is. Any level beyond will be clipped by PPro and it always introduces banding from the scratch."

Not from my testing in Ppro CS 5.5. My 0-255 levels remained intact in the rendered file according to even the scopes in Vegas.

All of this may depend on the sequence settings used. I'm no Ppro guru.
I did find your sample gradient with certain sequence setting would decode very strangely whereas my one was fine. This might have something to do with yours being 4bpc, it would also explain the banding issue you and I have seen. I think something is wrong with that file itself.

"Uncheck "Studio RGB" in the Videoscope's setting if you applied sRGB to cRGB for display adaption."

That sort of works however for levels outside legal the waeform monitor understandably shows them clipped.

"Though isn't this something we all asked for many times (me included): a simple switch for the internal preview!?"

That would certainly be a huge step forward.
Having the concept of a Sequence in Vegas would also be good.
Vegas being a DirectShow app might be another giant step forward.

Bob.

Bob, I was wrong regarding the PPro process. I was mislead because I tested with a single frame PNG export which seems to go its way over the PPro preview (also the RGB parades in PPro were misleading).

I just did some further tests with using a 16-255 signal finally exported as XDCAM HD and H.264. And here the PPro result states what you described. Only the PPro preview is modified whereas the internal processing acts pretty much the same like Vegas Pro does it. No clipping, no mapping, no banding.

Which now leads me to something OT: In PPro is there a way to let the preview display the full range levels so I can see what's really in my signal below 16 and above 235?

I remember going back and forth about these issues with Bill Ravens for a long time. Eventually he realized that the way Vegas is designed is messed up and moved on to another NLE.

Guys... you are looking for a simple answer but a simple answer does not exist. Here is the correct answer:
http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/v8color/vegas-9-levels.htm

Youtube does *NOT* expect 16-235 RGB. It expects a properly encoded file. To make a properly encoded file in Vegas, you need to know what your output codec expects. Usually it is studio RGB. Otherwise it is computer RGB. Some codecs will expect either depending on your project settings (I told the Vegas developers that this would be confusing...).

2- If you haven't figured out already, other NLEs will handle all the levels conversions for you.

Drop a JPEG into the timeline and render to DV/HDV. Every single NLE on the market will get this right except for Vegas.

Vegas does NOT handle levels conversions correctly. You have to do them yourself.

There is no simple logic to the levels conversions. The manual provides very little information on what you need to do. The video preview window only displays a correct image for computer RGB levels, which is pretty stupid.


So please... for the love of god. I am sick and tired of discussing this. Put in a feature request... Vegas should handle levels conversions automatically like every other NLE on the market. This is a glaring omission and clearly it is too difficult to explain to people.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/support/productsuggestion.asp

This is how I would like Vegas to work:

In your project settings, there should be four options:
1- Legacy mode. Do things the old way.
2- Convert everything to studio RGB levels. <-- This should be the default.
3- Convert everything to computer RGB levels.
4- Convert everything to 32-bit floating point instead of 8-bit, black at 0.0 and white at 1.0.

#2, #3, and #4 all have arguments for and against them. #4 would be the ultimate solution (no banding introduced by Vegas)... but it is the slowest. #2 can have situations where you have banding because your JPEG was converted from computer RGB to studio RGB back to computer RGB. #3 (and #1 in practice) would have similar problems. I am guessing that almost nobody will notice these banding problems.
--------------------------
Second requirement:

You should be able to seamlessly switch between 8-bit and 32-bit. Clearly, you want to do your rough edit (and FX) in 8-bit and have everything preview very quickly. If there are banding errors, then you can simply switch your project to 32-bit mode and render out that particular section in 32-bit.

To avoid broken output, Vegas should always send gamma-corrected floating point values to FX/filters. (Currently, the compositing gamma option in project settings let you do something else. I believe that it is an un-feature.) For optically correct compositing, Vegas should convert values to linear light for compositing and then convert values back to gamma-corrected. Yes, this is slower. I am willing to accept that compromise.
*There are other valid ways of doing things. I am not opposed to those other ways of doing things as long as FX/filters aren't broken and you can seamlessly switch between 32-bit and 8-bit.

----------------------------------
Other features:
If Vegas gets the levels conversions correct, then one might as well fix other elements of Vegas.

The background track should default to legal black.
Track compositing should understand studio versus computer RGB.
The scopes should automatically catch studio versus computer RGB.
The broadcast safe FX should automatically catch studio versus computer RGB.
The video preview window (and Windows Secondary Display) should automatically catch studio versus computer RGB.

Marco said:
"Bob, I was wrong regarding the PPro process. I was mislead because I tested with a single frame PNG export which seems to go its way over the PPro preview (also the RGB parades in PPro were misleading). "

Thank you so much for that. I was starting to doubt my sanity.

"In PPro is there a way to let the preview display the full range levels so I can see what's really in my signal below 16 and above 235?"

I wish I could answer that, in the past 24 hours I've learned more about Ppro than in the last decade :)
I'm inclined to think No. Probably you'd be better off asking in a Ppro forum.



Somewhat OT:
There really is some cool stuff in Ppro :)
I Wish it was as good at audio as Vegas :(

Bob.

Still not working?

Glen, can you explain how computer RGB is a smaller colorspace than studio RGB?

I thought Studio was just computer shrunken to 16-235. ??

Studio RGB can represent color values that are blacker than black and whiter than white.

In studio RGB, the legal values take up the range from 16-235. 0-15 are values that represent colors that are blacker than black (e.g. one of the PLUGE bars in color bars).

I understand the legal/illegal part. But these are both RGB-based systems, right? And they're both using 0-255 in each channel to record values. So I see a one-to-one relationship between the two, meaning they can both register exactly the same number of colors.

And studio RGB seems smaller if you're only talking about legal values--there are fewer bits of information to work with.

What am I missing?

In studio RGB:

16 represents black.
235 represents white.
15, 14, 13, ... 3, 2, 1, 0 represent colors that are darker/blacker than black.

In computer RGB:
0 represents black.
255 represents white.
You cannot represent a single color that is blacker than black.

Studio RGB can represent a greater range of colors. That's all. Obviously there is a tradeoff in that a lot of code values are 'wasted' on illegal colors that cannot be displayed.

"What am I missing?"

edit:
Glenn beat me to it.

Bob.

Thanks guys! I actually didn't realize how color spaces work. It's interesting that the narrower sRGB can be superior to Adobe RGB if you're not using those extra values.

Glen, I don't know how you're still sane...

:)

Um... Adobe RGB is something else entirely.

sRGB:
People on this forum started abbreviating studio RGB to sRGB. This is extremely confusing, as there is a sRGB color space that is completely different than studio RGB.

Glen, I don't know how you're still sane...
Haha you have no idea.