Turn a color clip into black and white. Each pixel becomes a gray value weighted by how bright its color looks, so a red jacket and a blue sky keep their relative brightness instead of collapsing to the same gray.
Linear light
With Linear Light on, the weighting is done after converting from the gamma-encoded file values to linear light, and the result is converted back. Smooth gradients such as skies and studio backdrops come out with fewer visible steps. Turn it off to weight the gamma-encoded values directly, which renders saturated reds and blues noticeably darker.
Auto-contrast and clip
Flat footage, such as log profiles or hazy exteriors, turns into murky gray. Auto-contrast finds each frame’s darkest and brightest tones and stretches them to black and white. Clip ignores that share of extreme pixels first, so one specular highlight does not stop the stretch.
The stretch is measured per frame. A clip where a bright window swings into view will shift in overall brightness as it does; for a steady grade across a shot, leave Auto-contrast off and correct exposure in the source.
Partial color and inversion
Grayscale Amount mixes back the original color: 70% to 85% gives a faded, bleached look. Invert flips the gray scale into a negative. For a colored monochrome such as sepia or cyan, the duotone video maps the same brightness onto two colors of your choice.