Footage Encoding Too Dark?

I'm having trouble with a night time lapse that is encoding too dark. I've tried both h.264 and DNxHD etc. All give me the same result. I've tried all kinds of settings in the render settings to no avail. Funny thing is that when I tried encoding it originally with h.264 it was fine and matched. But it was highly pixelated/compressed so I was trying to eliminate that problem and that's when I ran into this issue. Anyone have any suggestions or an explanation on what's happening? I'm using Resolve 15 b2.

Here's a screen shot of the original on the left and the encoded h.264 on the right.

Bring the encoded video back into resolve (as a new not color managed project) and see if it shows all right. If so you can then conclude the problem is not Resolve's.

Bring the encoded video back into resolve (as a new not color managed project) and see if it shows all right. If so you can then conclude the problem is not Resolve's.

I just tried that and the encoded footage appears dark. So I assume this means Resolve is doing something to the levels during the encoding process. I just can't figure out or what or why since it worked fine the first few attempts.

I would check Delivery -> Advanced Settings -> Data Levels and see whether it's set to Auto, Video, or Full. One of those will definitely be wrong. Generally, "Auto" will work in most cases. DNxHD is a special case.

It always helps to include a second of color bars and/or grayscale ramp to check the scopes and troubleshoot where the problem is occurring.