I also highly object to the Levels effect automatically messing with my IRE levels at the default setting.
If I want the video broadcast safe, I will happily use the Broadcast Safe effect. I have never had anything air on broadcast television and doubt I ever will. The levels effect should do what I tell it to do, not assume that it needs to mess with the IRE of my clip.
Having said that, I am also not happy with the way that the Levels effect works to reduce IRE in comparison to what the Broadcast Safe effect does.
The first image is untouched, the second with the default levels effect and the third is the Broadcast Safe set to 100 IRE maximum. As you can see, the Levels effect messes with the IRE but does not clip it properly to 100 IRE. So why do it at all. Look carefully and you will see that the Broadcast Safe effect actually limits the IRE to 100 maximum. I did not use the 7.5 setup in order to concentrate on the upper end.
