Several months ago, we remarked how our YouTube videos were being ‘stretched out’ when viewed on an iPhone 12 or later or when watching on a MacBook Pro with XDR display set to reference mode P3-1600 nits. Basically, the image becomes too bright overall. This absolutely destroys the mood of our most recent upload, Ngô Hải Hà, so we”ve gone ahead and re-graded it for those viewing on one of those devices. The original upload should look just fine on a MacBook Pro XDR set to reference mode HDR video P3-ST2084, or on an LG OLED TV or equivalent when viewed in a dim surround.
We’re also reposting excerpts from a few recent articles having to do with the appearance of HDR videos on consumer devices. P.S. We don’t recommend following Steve Robertson’s advice about grading at 1,600 nits, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to check out your QT file at 1,600 nits to get an idea of how it will look on many smartphones these days prior to uploading it to YT.
Patrick Inhofer, CEO, Mixing Light: 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.
Eric Weidt: Once, he [David Fincher] came into Los Angeles; he would stop by, because his office is right there… he would stop by, pop in. But really, you know, to him, it always looks amazing on the the BVM [Sony reference monitor], right? He’d say, ‘God, it looks great in here. But on on my monitor, this gamma is stretching too much and it’s making it too saturated’ – and he hates too much saturation, right? So, he really doesn’t want a consumer device to look, he does not trust the fact that this is what everybody in the world is gonna see, by any stretch. And I think he’s right, actually. For me, grading, it’s really a little bit frustrating, because I feel like I’m looking at this [the reference monitor] all the time, and it’s really tight, and it’s really compacted, and it sometimes feels a bit flat. But he’s right, that if you put it on the LG OLED, it’s gonna stretch out, it’s gonna be really contrasty, and the colors are gonna come up.
Steven Robertson, software engineer, Google: We suspect that most of our audience who’s going to be trying to grade HDR for the first time is going to be on a MacBook Pro with an XDR display. It’s amazing that such a powerful tool is so widely available, so well done Apple on that one. That tool has modes. We recommend leaving it in its default mode [Pro Display XDR (P3-1600 nits)], which enables the display mapping we talked about earlier. That means it’ll look more correct in a wider variety of viewing conditions. There is a reference mode [HDR Video (P3-ST2084)] and you can choose it, but only do this if you’re in a controlled viewing environment that matches the reference standard. You don’t have that, I promise. The only color suite I have ever seen get this right is at Disney. If you’re Disney, well done. Otherwise, leave it here, cowboy.
The Daejeon Chronicles 
nice
thk