I like your new screenshots, and I think your assessment of them is fair. Nice and dispassionate. I feel you're able to look at your own work quite objectively, which is great.

Now back to calibration, etc.:

I'm using the histogram when capping with VirtualVCR, but I'm disappointed to see that it's so small. I'm being pretty conservative, sacrificing a bit of contrast to be sure that I don't blow out the whites nor crush the blacks. On the histogram, it looks like I could push things closer to the edges, but the histogram doesn't seem to be detailed enough for me to know for sure that there aren't (m)any outliers that I'd be destroying. Some things can be fixed in "post", but blow-outs and crushing can't. How have you approached all this?

I've poked around a bit with the ColorTools VDub plugin, but I'm not sure how to use it effectively. Got any hints -- or a complete rundown? I feel like without reference material (like a test pattern), knowing the info CTools can tell you isn't particularly useful. Or am I out to lunch?

I really wish there were some colour bars or something absolutely repeatable to calibrate to. I'd like to think I've got a pretty good eye, but I like concrete, irrefutable numbers better.