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I never noticed my iPad Mini 4 doing that.

I have a fancy theory:

You are maybe watching videos in a pitch black environment and you're holding the iPad so close to your face that, when a white object is displayed on the screen, the light emitted by the object on the screen bounces off your face and tricks the environment brightness sensor of the iPad Mini into believing that you've moved to a brighter environment, therefore leading to an automatic increase in screen brightness.

If this theory is correct, then you should stop noticing this "problem" if you turn OFF the automatic brightness feature in the display settings on your iPad.
 
I've been struggling with this annoying problem for a long time and I think I won ;)

Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Smart Invert ON

This is works perfectly on my iPad Air 2 with iOS 13.3.1

Please check it out on your different models/oses and let me know.
To anyone reading this, YES this solves it. Wow! Thank you ’Egious’. This is an infuriating byproduct of some unknown engineering aspect.
I have been bothered for years by this. I am a cinematographer who’s own work is constantly being over exposed on iOS/macOS products 4 seconds after pressing play.
Thanks again! You’ve made this DPs day!
 
I second that opinion... FINALY a setting that got rid of this annoying thing. Yes, I confirm. Watching this on ipad pro 12.9 inch from 2017 onward. They have this issue.

In a dark scene, when the subtitles come out, the contrast is messed up and the black levels are changed. Unlike @ChromeCloud suggested, I don't think the light is bouncing on my face and messing the auto contrast because the issue is resolved with smart invert without changing anything to my environnement.

Can't believe apple is happy with this issue and netflix being a very big app as well.

best
 
Had to register to this forum just to say this.

Yes, smart invert “solves” the problem with the brightness/contrast when subtitles appear.

BUT it does so by leaving the brightness/contrast at a state similar to when the subtitle is on. Turning on assistive touch does the same.

So it doesn’t really solve the issue, because the blacks are not really black anymore and that really ****s up dark scenes.
 
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