DV Cable TV Commercials a Little Too Dark -- Why?
 

I see a number of local cable TV commercials I know are shot on MiniDV and they generally seem a little too dark compared with network ads. Why is this exactly?

Camera gamma? Lighting? MiniDV format? Problems with the local cable feed? A combination of factors?

How can the darker look be avoided?

To take a wild guess... it could potentially be due to the 7.5 IRE setup issue. Black level should be at 7.5 IRE (for North American NTSC), whereas a lot of prosumer DV decks (i.e. DSR11) will output black level at 0 IRE (and chroma has to be changed accordingly too). This causes the black level to be too low.

You can have this problem if you dub DV to betaSP... or if for some reason they take the analog output off a DV deck. Though I'm guessing they use some sort of playback server and it makes more sense to go SDI in, where analog black level is not an issue.

2- It could be something entirely different.

3- If you are the client, you might be able to ask them how not to have your video dark. They do not want to lose a customer.