Thank you for the screenshots. I actually stumbled across another issue related to a freeze in Matinee when recording a movie, using the default output directory. Just in case your editor freezes and this occurs to you, the current workaround for this is to change the directory to something shorter, like your desktop for example.
To clarify, both the AVI and WMV file type look fine when played on the Windows Media Player, but when you bring the newly created (and uncompressed) AVI into Premier it appears darker?
I was able to get an AVI exported and did not see any darkening between the editor playback, and the rendered out movie. Perhaps I am doing something differently?
Cheers,