[Jay Gaillard]

Hey Laird, Thanks to your post i believe i have found the issues of getting footage too dark, saturated, contrasted after rendering mp4.

Im not sure if someone figured this out on here but After reading that you actually previewed your footage in the “Video preview on external monitor” by clicking the little blue monitor icon. But when i did that i found that i was still looking at the same exact preview as before (brighter). So i decided to look for some kind of preference and voila There it was.
by the way, It would be best if you had two monitors but works fine with just one screen.

To avoid rendering and then later find out that the video rendered is actually darker then original edited you must right click the little blue monitor icon in the preview video tab and click on “Preview device preference” or just go to menu bar > Options > then Preference > then “Preview device tab”. There you will find under “display adapter” > “Adjust levels from studio to computer RGB”. That needs to be “CHECKED”. Once that is done, you can now see exactly what you are color correcting in preview but only in the extended monitor view.