Computer Colour is Broken (Gamma)

This video by Munute Physics makes reference to how the level values for video is adjust ‘to save disk space’ – in fact the mechanism discussed is a much older hang-over from the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) days of television which gave rise to the gamma transfer characteristic.

Regardless of that part of the explanation the video highlights a common problem in many systems where people are working on video processing without a good understanding of the fundamentals of broadcast engineering which gave rise to these characteristics.

In recent years with the rise of High Dynamic Range (HDR) this gamma curve behaviour is being more generically refered to as Optical-Electrical Transform Function (OETF).