A student came to me and wanted to change a credit/rexport a 6.5 sequence in 7.  No problem, pulled the 6.5 bins into 7, changed a title and exported same as souce - but the quicktime became very contrasy?  We used the exact same export settings we had used the previous year in 6.5 on the same footage (usually same as source,but if we did a custome codec we always choose 601/709 - which presumably - if anything would be "flatter" looking on teh computer.)  We put last years "same as source" export next to this years ... its pretty dramatcally different?

 Yestereday I had a student working, again in 7.02 on a mac who needed to export - same thing, we did a same as source and it got pretty drastically more contrasty ... I went back re-rendered everything, did a video mixdwon and even placed the color limiter on the utmost track - in case he had some illegal colors - re-exported, same as source ... same thing, the export is noticably more contrasty.

I have subsequently started getting complaints from students - more or less the same issue, dark films get really dark and there are digital artifacts in the blacks... light/bright films are noticably more contrasty ...

At this point the only thing I can think to do is go in, do a video mixdown "flatten" out the film to try to account for the contrast  on the export - which I KNOW is a bad idea but I can't think of what else to do at this point  ... any ideas?  its just so wierd to have same as source * 601/709 getting MORE contrasty on export?  I would suspect someting in the progects but we find that 6.5 projects pulled into 7 - which exported fine last year, now have the same issues so it sieems to be linked to 7 somehow?  The students shot RED, AMA linked and transcoded ... so they are now exporting native MXF files -  the graphs show the films are "broadcast" legal... 

try using RGB instead of 601/709, somewhere along the line (ver 6.5)  these buttons got transposed in the software (they are correct now in 7.0.3.

What codec is being used? Custom exports or Same As Source?

What was the original source footage? Safe to assume its RGB. 

As of version 7 color management is applied during the AMA link process automatically. This can be seen in the color management menu under settings. If your students are running a legacy import then make sure that when chosing which files to import they go to options-image-File pixel to video mapping and select 601/709. Now when you export you must also select 601/709 as the source footage (remapped media in the timeline) is in that space.