Well, I'm not a big fan of the Avid scopes but, from here, it looks like your darkest blacks are resting on 0. The blacks in your subjects hair are much darker  than your background.

I totally agree, and realizing that, I am doubting myself on how I phrased the question to the shooter, and now I want to ask him again, but be more specific about the black background.

I'm sure I'll keep you posted ;)

BLKDOG,

 Let me ask you this.  When working with digital footage that was shot with a setup of 0, should i have the "ntsc has setup" checked or unchecked?

  I have an assumption, I am wondering if it's the same as what your answer may be.

Thanks

From what I have been told, it should always be on if you are monitoring any flavor of NTSC.

OK,

 Obviously I dont know either way, but I was starting to assume it should he unchecked.  My reasoning for this was that perhaps it was a carry-over from all analog days where NTSC in the states was 7.5, and 0 in Japan.  But now with digital video being 0, that had changed.  Some threads on this forum talk about that option being for monitoring only, and some threads talk about it like it effects imports.

it matters most if you're going out to broadcast. (remember 'pedestal', anyone?)

OK, I come to my own conclusion as to what is happening.  I could present all my tests, but it would be rather long.

But, in any case, the short of it is that I believe that when p2 footage is imported into Avid, it is having incorrect interpretation rules placed upon it.  While it should import the footage assuming 601/709 Color Levels, it is instead importing assuming RGB Color Levels.  Avid is effectively trying to bring the footage into the 16-235 range, when it actually already is.

I'm gonna stop there.  Anyway, I have no idea what to do about it.

Bob Russo just posted this nugget earlier today:

"Both Avid and P2 use OPAtom MXF files; there is no transcode or rewrap required at all, the Avid reads the MXF header information and the MXF files can be thrown into the Avid MediaFiles folder if needed... the files are available immediately and editing can start right away."

So perhaps in the consolidation, a color space computation is made incorrectly.  I recall seeing that selection in the media creation tabs.  The P2 media that appears in our bins after the 'import P2 clips' hasn't been touched by any Avid anything, according to the above.  Right or wrong, Mr. Russo?

 In the part of supporting native formats, Avid writes about MC 3.0 this;

Panasonic DVCPRO HD

• DVCPRO HD - 100 Mb/s
• AVC-I (no render)
• Native project formats: 1080i/59.94, 1080i/50, 720p/60, 720p/25, 720p/23.976

Can someone confirm if it is by purpose or misstake there is no statement about 720p/50?

Here is a quick test you can perform... well, quickly.

I created a black solid in After Effects with RGB = 0,0,0

brought that comp into Adobe Premiere CS3, which has the ability to export a p2 organzied folder structure.  Export it.

Import that black clip p2 content into Avid.

You can see that Avid automatically bumps the black level up to 7.5 IRE (16 on the 0-255 scale). 

I somewhat understand this being legal broadcast levels, etc. But I personally need this level to stay at 0 without having to color correct every single clip in the timeline.

Thanks

If this is a simple import command or pref setting, I wonder what that is?  If an undesired modification occurs upon import, this needs to be acknowledged by Avid and addressed.

Compressor used to make this same 'involuntary' choice when creating .m2v files. Made me crazy.

Bob Russo is looking into this for you guys. He'll post as soon as he's able.

He seems to think its a setting somewhere.

thanks much!  gotta love these boards!

Great, hope to hear something soon.  Thanks!

hmmn...a week and a half.  I wonder if 3.0 is manifesting the same P2 import 'modification' issues
...