@rockroadpix yeah, but that doesn't mean "vegas sucks"

Much appreciate the input, fellas. Will tinker around with it more.

@Superset' Vegas handles PNG and Jpegs colorspace levels differently than video, that's why you should put them on a separate track within Vegas and adjust levels accordingly.

To fix difference between the 2 stills just enable a studio to computer levels change ( assuming you have nothing else on the master bus) the preview will appear milky blacks and greyish whites, when you render out to mp4 the levels will be correct. One other thing I always do on export is bump up the saturation a few notches, mp4 exports out of Vegas also tend to desaturated slightly.

Getting the same result out of two different NLEs is probably not going to be perfect, they all have their own quirks.

@rockroadpix what makes you say that? lol

It's definitely not because of the settings and preferences!

This is a long lasting issue in almost all versions of Sony Vegas which is never fixed. It works properly only if you render out to .WMV, otherwise no "Computer RGB - Studio RGB", no "Levels", no additional filters and plug-ins help.

@thepalalias Thank you for your response. Yes, I tried 8 bit, 32-Bit Video Levels, 32-Bit Full 1.0 and 2.0. And for that test .veg, I'm just using a PNG of my MOV file and using Vegas export JPG option from the Preview Window to compare. I'm doing that to remove all the gamma shift stuff that I've seen from different video players. And I'm using Vegas Pro 12.

@Rambo Thank you for your response and the links. I've read those in the past and from knowing that Vegas can be really weird about colorspace, I'm guessing that's why I'm here asking for some help on how to compensate for it using my test project. I also tried adding the Computer RGB - Studio RGB levels to the .veg to see if it helps and it still doesn't match what I get in CS6.

Here are some quick samples of what I want (CS6_ScratchPadStill) and what I'm getting (Vegas_ScratchPadStill). Note that these two projects have the same video effects applied to them.
And sorry for the slight thread drift.

@douglashorn It was an honest question, not sure why you would need to question my question

@montagereflex If you haven't got FC yet, it's worth every penny.

@superset, couple of things you need to know about Sony Vegas. 1. What you see in the preview player window is not always what you get on render. 2. The scopes refect what is in the Vegas Preview player window, so they also can be incorrect. The way I handle this is I apply a levels correction to the master video bus and then do my levels and color correction using scopes and Preview window. When happy with the result, I disable the master bus correction and then export. The resulting render will be as you saw in the scopes and preview window.

Reason this happens, Vegas is expecting computer swing levels at import but is being fed studio swing from the mts files so preview and scopes are wrong. Applying the master bus correction corrects the shift temporally while you edit. Have a read here http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/v8color/vegas-9-levels.htm#codecTable http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/colorspaces/colorspaces.html

@DouglasHorn Well said. Most people don't realize that Magic Bullet can be used, in its simplest form, as a means to apply one of its collection of pre-built looks. That's mostly how it was packaged up and sold as a tool that users would associate with its name, as an easy, fire-and-forget, "make it look like a movie" plug-in. But it's not that (or doesn't have to be) and didn't start its life like that.

Before it was a product available to the public it was a proprietary set of tools developed for the color grading suites at The Orphanage (RIP). Their initial startup capital was largely based on keeping their color grading suites busy grading commercials, music videos, short films and features, at a time when I don't believe the original ColorFinesse was available. There were no options like we enjoy now for color correction and products like AE and Commotion were only just about then expanding beyond limited 8bit support.

Then, like DD did with Nuke, like Knoll did with what became Photoshop back in the '80s, like I forget the guys name did with Commotion, the original creator partners with or sells a source-code snapshot to an actual software company to bring it to market as a an product and deal with the resulting support and customer fulfillment.

Before that it was a custom set of After Effects techniques (since internally it doesn't do anything you can't do with ganging lots more of AE's filters and operators together and is how it was built) by Stu Maschwitz while he was still working at ILM. Its sole, original purpose was to color grade and de-artifact the DV footage he was shooting for his personal short films as a repeatable methodology that could be applied to future projects.

There was nothing stopping people then or now from doing exactly what MB did then or does now. But most don't or can't. Shian's project is very similar in this respect, yet there aren't a multitude of people developing or using their own solutions on par with these. Not even a handful. They'll look down their noses though.

@GravitateMediaGroup - The way MBL works is there are a number of configurable tools that can be applied at various nodes along the render chain. These are the "built-in tools" I referred to.

Additionally, there are several pre-built Looks which are composed of render chains that use any number of these tools in various configurations to create a pre-build effect or Look. For many, this is the main selling point of the program. For others, this is why they look down their noses at MBL for it's out-of-the-box approach, color(correct)-by-numbers approach. However, it's just as easy to use MBL as a tool suite without touching the pre-built looks. One way isn't better than the other, it depends on what you want to do.

By the way, am I misinterpreting your message to me, or were you kind of being a dick just then?

Easily achieved in Vegas with the free 6 way AAVColorLab (www.aav6cc.blogspot.com) and Sony 3 way Color Corrector and much faster rendering too.

@douglashorn

isn't pre-made and built-in the same thing?

@montagereflex i'll mess around a bit and see what I can come up with. are you trying to achieve this look with a gh2 or a 7d?