I have just had a bit of an aha moment and am looking for some clarification/confirmation.

Is the following true?

When shooting on XDCAM EX, my EX1 is producing a range of luma values from 0 - 255.

When I import these into Premiere Pro, it clips anything above 235 as white.

My highlights always clip more than I would like!

If I apply fast colour corrector with Output level set at 235, now I see the Superwhites.

Questions
1) Does the same thing happen with blacks below 16? It appears not to???
2) is this only a preview monitor issue - if I render out footage without applying any filters will Superwhites be visible or not? Say I send my timeline to DVD without doing anything to the superwhites - will I see details in the 235-255 range or will it just be white?
3) does this really mean that every time I shoot anything, I have to apply FCC or another CC filter to recover detail in the superwhites
4) what is the point of recording the data up there anyway? Why does this problem exist?

If you have installed a codec in PPro for your EX1 such as the XD codec from CalibratedQ, check the codec settings for YUV709 (full) instead of yuv709 (sempte) which clips at 16 and 235.

I don't think PPro does the clipping, I could be wrong, but I haven't found any setting that would do that.

(more) The YUV colorspace is defined as 16-235, if you are using a codec that converts to RGB space it can convert to full range. If you are working completely in YUV the conversion won't happen and you get the 16-235 that was recorded. That's my understanding, more info at http://www.calibratedsoftware.com. Even if you don't use this particular codec, the user info pdf posted with with their xd codec has a pretty good explanation.

1. No
2. Just test it - export a short clip and see for yourself. My bet is the clipping will be there.
3. If 2 shows that clipping is there, then yes.
4. It's there to give you the possibility to recover some highlights from clipped footage. It's a safety zone. If the specs were followed exactly, you'd only get 16-235 range of data, which would be problematic for many applications. Stretching it to 0-255 gives you more latitude in the whites.