Video Range vs Full Range
When video is stored in a file, the brightness and colour values have to sit within a numerical range. There are two common versions. Video range — also called limited range — runs from 16 to 235. It is the standard for broadcast, TV, and most professional camera output. Full range — also called data range — runs from 0 to 255. It is common in graphics, titles and certain export workflows. On a correctly calibrated screen, both can look identical. But if a file tagged as one range is treated as the other, the image either looks washed out and grey, or crushed and clipped.
The Premiere Problem
Adobe Premiere Pro has no dedicated export option to explicitly set or force the colour range of the output file. The result is that different elements of the same timeline can end up tagged differently without the editor realising it. The most common scenario: a film has been colour-graded throughout in video range. But the end credits — designed separately in After Effects or brought in as a graphic — are in full range. Both sit on the same timeline. Both look fine on the editor's monitor.
Now you have a mixed file. The main picture is video range. The credits are full range. An automated DCP system may read the whole thing as one or the other — and whichever way it guesses, something will be wrong. The credits look washed out, or the grade looks crushed. Either way, it will look like that in the cinema, in front of an audience.
An automated system cannot reliably catch this. The file looks valid. There is no error, no flag, no warning. The numbers are all technically within range. It just looks wrong. The only way to catch it is to have someone who knows what they are looking at manually measure the incoming levels before encoding begins.
What We Do
On every job, we check the incoming video levels before we do anything with the file. We measure the actual levels, look at the waveforms, and check for inconsistencies between different sections of the timeline. If we find a mixed-levels file, we flag it to you while there is still time to fix it in the source — before the DCP is made, not after it is playing in a cinema.
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