Video black is 16, video white is 235.  That's 100% normal, and it's not a problem at all.

And NEVER set your luminance level to 0-255!!!!  Even if it doesn't seem to have any issues, you will still end up with an illegal video signal that could play back improperly on some displays.

Remember - ALWAYS 16-235, NEVER 0-255!

There are 2 problems :

1) I'm joining 2 sources together - one (SE DVD - sourced) has black bars really black (0, 0, 0), the second one (GOUT upsized to anamorphic and color corrected) has black bars (16, 16, 16)

2) I have done color correction of this problematic source, and the only way how the colors look "natural" is with the 0-255 "range". In other words, the avs script looks great while playing it, but the colors of the resulting mpv file look pretty bad

Are you talking about the letterboxing?  Crop it out completely, color correct the source so it's at 16-235, then add in new black bars that are at 16 IRE.

You might also have to do more radical color correction to the SE source if it's been rendered in the wrong color space in order to make it look right.

Moth3r said:

What colourspace does your script output? The luminance level setting in CCE only has any effect if the source is RGB.

Hm ... very good question. I have a feeling that the SE video is RGB, but the GOUT-sourced video was YV12() . I have to check it when I come home, thanks for the tip

ChainsawAsh said:

Are you talking about the letterboxing?  Crop it out completely, color correct the source so it's at 16-235, then add in new black bars that are at 16 IRE.

You might also have to do more radical color correction to the SE source if it's been rendered in the wrong color space in order to make it look right.

I've been already thinking about it