“We don’t actually know what the ones and zeros that we’re putting on the drives are actually telling us”

Patrick Inhofer, CEO, Mixing Light, on the perils of grading with today’s reference displays:

“We’re in a situation now where the color volumes we’re working at, the nit ranges we’re working at, the brightness values we’re working at, exceed the ability of any modern display to reproduce. When HDR came out, the specifications were designed to exceed our ability to actually see it today, with the knowledge that eventually we will be able to have displays that can fully show us the full color volume at the full brightness range. So we’re working under specifications that exceed our deliverables. And in many cases, all of our work, technically, I think – probably all of the work we’re doing at any level – is somewhat compromised by that. We don’t actually know what the ones and zeros that we’re putting on the drives are actually telling us. We think we do based on, you know, the display I’m using behind me – that’s an LG right there – I’m going to grade HDR to that, I am going to make decisions based on its loading behavior unique to that particular consumer display that does not anywhere come close to the specification we’re working against. So, I think that for most of us, that’s the thing we’re running against. I mean it’s the worst thing you can tell a colorist, which is [that] you can’t trust your monitor, right? I mean, what the hell are we supposed to do? But I think there’s a certain range at the high nit level, high saturation, where I think we’re a little blind, you’ve got to rely on your scopes, maybe be a little conservative, so that when it’s revealed five years later, what you actually did, you’re not surprised in a bad way. So I think that asks for a more conservative approach. It’ll be interesting to see in a couple years what some of those early HDR grades on Netflix look like. Do they still hold up? I don’t know.”