Can I throw in my 2 more cents worth? Not that’s it needed.
(And by the way, the age of my eyes falls somewhere between Kevin’s and Adrian’s)
But… what player is everyone watching the Mirsad's video on? When I watch Misrad’s video in Quick Time player, I see absolutely no darkening in the sky or anywhere else, when the switch to still/freeze/snapshot/pause happens. However I do see that it “appears”, that a bit of Sharpness (found in Color Adjustment in the Fix/Enhance room), has been applied to the still/freeze/snapshot/pause, as I notice that the still is slightly sharper than the footage. Which is usually the other way around on my system, and is why I often do Sharpen a freeze/snapshot up a bit.
I also watched the video in VLC Player, and I still didn’t see this darkening.
But… in the VLC player, if I go to
Tools > Extended Settings > Video Effects, and bump the overall Brightness slider way up, then, and only then, can I indeed see a very noticeable change in Brightness (or "darkening"), at the switches between footage and stills. However, once I returned to the default settings, I could not see any change at all
So… perhaps, as was kind of suggested by JL, it may be a matter of what video card one is using? Because once an exaggerated Brightness is applied to the whole clip, there is indeed a quite noticeable change in values between the footage and stills. So it does appear that something is going on, or that there are some value changes happening or built in to the production. But again, at normal/default settings, it is not noticeable on my system at all.
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