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This information is for Sony Vegas Pro 10, but much of it will also apply to Vegas Pro 11 and 12.
* Vegas Pro's working color space is RGB with a range of 0-255 in each of the R, G, and B channels.
* In 8-bit projects, RGB values are integers 0-255.
* In 32-bit projects, RGB values are 32-bit floating point values.
Floating point values are 0-1 internally, but Vegas still shows them as 0-255 in most places in the user interface. 32-bit projects support values below 0 and above 1, and some filters allow access to these out-of-range values.
** In 32-bit full range projects, you should set the compositing gamma to 2.22, which means that Vegas's compositing and filters operate linearly on the encoded RGB values, same as in 8-bit and 32-bit video levels projects. Setting the compositing gamma to 1 changes the behavior of compositing and some filters in a way that you probably don't want (but perhaps is appropriate for video sources with a linear transfer function)
* Projects can be switched freely between 8-bit mode and 32-bit video levels mode with no change in the behavior of compositing or filters. 8-bit mode is much faster for editing, preview, and rendering, whereas 32-bit mode is quite slow but much more accurate and less prone to banding and other color accuracy artifacts.
* By default Vegas Pro makes no particular assumptions about the primary chromaticities or transfer function (“gamma”) of the RGB encoding: Operations are linear on the RGB values, and the scopes and preview window show the full range of RGB values with no conversion or remapping.
* Typically your source video and delivery formats will be rec.709-encoded, so ideally your monitor should be calibrated to display rec.709 video as well.
* Most computer monitors are calibrated for sRGB, which is very close to rec.709. They have the same primary chromaticites and white point. Rec.709's transfer function is approximately a power curve with a gamma of 2.4, compared to sRGB's transfer function which is a power function with a gamma of 2.2. The differences are small enough that you'll be fine to just calibrate your monitor for sRGB and ignore the differences - in fact the gamma would need to be changed by a larger amount in any case to account for different levels of ambient light in your editing environment.