Agreed. I'd rather have the grey background of space than "twinkly" starfields that are terribly distracting. That being said, Vegas has a "restore black" function that allows you to expand the darkest colors without messing with brightness and contrast.

"So is combustion working now?"

Actually, it always "worked". I was able to correct, render, and save a workspace of the first 2 minutes of SW. The next 2 minutes, it rendered, but didn't save changes (and yes, I did update it.) So, I'll just render as I go along. No biggie.