Encoding to Blu-ray is destroying my black levels - what am I doing wrong?

I need to burn a short to Blu-ray for a screening coming up, but every time Premiere/Encoder/Encore finishes the disc, the black levels look nothing like what I saw in my project timeline OR in Encore's preview window. The blacks are soft, grey, with way too much detail in them. Research has led me to believe that my issue has something to do with the color values of my project going from 0-255, but that Adobe Media Encoder will automatically shift that to 16-235. Or something. I don't know, all of this is new to me in the last 12 hours.
I did miss around with the Levels effect in Premiere just to test this hypothesis, and when I bumped the black output levels from 0 to 16 in the timeline, it did replicate the difference that I was seeing in finished blu's.
I've scoured all the settings in Premiere and Encore for a way to control the black levels going into/coming out of Encoder, but cannot find anything. Someone please tell me what stupid thing I overlooked so I can make this movie look right.
For reference, my source video is:
DSLR .mov footage, 1920x1080, 23.976
And I'm exporting to Blu-ray using the following settings:
MPEG 2 (also tried H.264, same result)
NTSC
CBR (movie's only 22 minutes), but I've also tried VBR 2pass at 40mbps max, 35mbs target, and 25mbps minimum.
Profile: 5.0
Max render quality, maximum bit depth, max everything.
Running Premiere Pro Cs5.5

S.A. Hudson wrote:
...Research has led me to believe that my issue has something to do with the color values of my project going from 0-255, but that Adobe Media Encoder will automatically shift that to 16-235. Or something. I don't know, all of this is new to me in the last 12 hours.
I did miss around with the Levels effect in Premiere just to test this hypothesis, and when I bumped the black output levels from 0 to 16 in the timeline, it did replicate the difference that I was seeing in finished blu's.
I've scoured all the settings in Premiere and Encore for a way to control the black levels going into/coming out of Encoder, but cannot find anything. Someone please tell me what stupid thing I overlooked so I can make this movie look right.
For reference, my source video is:
DSLR .mov footage, 1920x1080, 23.976
And I'm exporting to Blu-ray using the following settings:
MPEG 2 (also tried H.264, same result)
NTSC
CBR (movie's only 22 minutes), but I've also tried VBR 2pass at 40mbps max, 35mbs target, and 25mbps minimum.
Profile: 5.0
Max render quality, maximum bit depth, max everything.
Running Premiere Pro Cs5.5
You are correct. Depending on a host of technical factors (none of which are visible or controllable in the GUI) the raw footage that is sent from Premiere to AME for encode can be in the range 0-255 (PC) or 16-235 (TV). Rendering at Max Render Quality should have it come in as 16-235 always.
If you encode for TV the encoder will scale the range down - making it less contrasty - ie what you're seeing) or simply clamp the values so that anything below 16 is clamped to 16 and above 235 is clamped to 235.
You said that you have your TV connected to the PC via HDMI. Can you put the reference monitor on that display and confirm that the blacks are the same as the video seen inside PPro? If so your TV is configured correctly.
Next use the 3 way color corrector (NOT "Levels" or "Brightness and Contrast" - they are clamped to the 16-235 range!!!!) to blow the image out from 16-235 to full range (check in the vectorscope or YCrCb waveform to confirm it's full range - ie WAY past the 100% squares in the vectorscope).
Check on the TV and it should not show the greater gammut. If it does it means that your TV is doing full-range.
this is all a bit late for your showing but I hope it can help.
Anyhow off that tangent...
I would recommend you export a h.264 clip to a usb stick if your standard home-use blu-ray player has usb stick playback.
Put that stick in your blu-ray player or Samsung TV if it can do it too, and see if it'll play back with the right blacks.

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