Since software and digital files are so much more ubiquitous now, levels are an important concept to understand especially as a professional. But these concepts still apply to professional video work. The demise of expensive video hardware and the turn towards software has rendered some of the technical concepts of video useless. Film scanners as well as computer generated graphics on the other hand usually recorded or used full range data. Analog video hardware like tape decks and monitors were set to record and display video levels. Like most things in video that are difficult to understand, levels come from the ancient past of video creation. The blacks are really crushed and the whites are blown out.īoth of the scenarios above are potential levels issues.

You upload it to YouTube and it just doesn’t look quite right.

Or maybe you’re kicking out your final from Resolve with an Avid codec like DNxHR.

The whole time you’re thinking, this looks really washed out. You watch it in the theatre or a festival. Let’s say you have a full movie that you edited in Premiere.

Davinci resolve editing clip scale