DrDre said:
I think with the crush in the bluray, less contrast is probably the way to go:Your 1st regrade looks the like your Verta target. The 2nd regrade doesn’t (looks more like the Blu-ray).
If you think such crushed picture(s) need the help for best conversion – perhaps raising the baseline from 0, to 8 or 12 (pushing the picture uniformly up), and then lowering the gamma from 1.0, to 0.95 (pulling the picture disproportionately down, mostly into the problematic lower end), that would be the best starting point. It would reduce the crushed range for least impact on your regrading.
The algorithm automatically minimizes the difference with the target, while minimizing unwanted noise, which leads to the first result. I agree with everybody here, that despite inheriting crush from the bluray, it does look much better.