One of the tools in color correction is "high clip" under the controls tab. This is designed to clip any part of the signal that goes higher than 100 IRE. 100 IRE is the official legal limit for white levels. Anything higher than 100 IRE will be grounds for rejection by a Broadcast QC inspector. You never want your white levels higher than 100. However, that being said, you can "cheat the reaper" on overly dark shots with brilliant highlights by pushing levels well above 100 IRE and then using the high clip to flatten out the waveform at 100.
I'm not quite sure what type of issue this is causing you, since this is keeping you legal. Do you have a specific problem that needs to be remedied?
{EDIT} If your source material was recorded with over-driven white levels beyond 100 IRE, you would need to capture that material with an anolog signal instead of firewire, so that you could lower the video level before capture. But, just like slightly overmodulated audio, over-exposed video cannot be undone, it can only be slighly adjusted and controlled.
Larry Rubin
Senior Editor
The Pentagon Channel
www.pentagonchannel.mil
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